President Joe Biden is expected to announce in a speech Thursday that commercial insurers must cover the total cost of at-home COVID-19 tests purchased by their members, according to senior administration officials.
The announcement is part of a larger plan to combat the omicron variant, which first emerged in South Africa last week; sporadic cases have cropped up in the U.S.
Officials said insurers already cover PCR tests that members can get at a doctor’s office, and this requirement will expand to at-home tests, too.
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Biden is also expected to announce that the federal government will distribute 50 million free at-home tests to sites such as rural health clinics and community health centers.
The federal government will deploy 60 emergency response teams to states as part of an effort to help combat new surges of the virus. The announcement comes as hospitals are already reeling from an increase in cases sparked by the highly transmissible delta variant.
Officials added in a transcript of a call to reporters Monday that the government has made $3 billion worth of investments to boost the manufacturing of at-home tests to ensure there is enough supply; the tests were hard to come by at the height of the delta variant surge this summer.
“We now have eight tests on the market, and supply will quadruple this month from where it was at the end of summer,” one administration official said.
The requirement only applies to people in employer-sponsored insurance and not those in government programs such as Medicare or Medicaid.
Some payer groups lauded the move. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association said in a statement that "we remain steadfast in our commitment to the health of Americans as the pandemic endures. Continued access to both vaccines and testing is a key piece of that."