Biden's Public Health Emergency Extension Could be Last One, Imperiling Millions of Beneficiaries

US Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra has said that his department would give 60 days notice before ending the public health emergency that has been in place since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. Biden’s recent extension of the status until January 11, 2023, means that Americans will find out on November 11 if its many benefits will imminently expire.

Those benefits include an expansion of Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program enrollment, as well as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps.

As many as 14 million people have health coverage because of the expanded enrollment, according to Kaiser Family Foundation estimates. It’s unclear how many would lose SNAP benefits, but the expansion in March 2020 immediately added 7 million people to the program, which gives households money that can only be used to buy food at grocery stores.

The DHHS’ Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services warned in August about “creating a roadmap” for the end of the emergency, offering resources for beneficiaries to prepare for the loss of various benefits.

The White House is facing increasing pressure to end the public health emergency. US Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and 25 other GOP senators - more than half the party’s presence in the upper chamber - wrote a letter to Becerra earlier this month asking for more information on how the DHHS will decide to “return to normalcy.”

“As the American people return to normalcy, workers, families, frontline health care providers, and a range of other stakeholders need transparency and certainty regarding the path forward,” the senators wrote.

“This unpredictable patchwork of mandates and questionable authorities will continue to erode the public’s confidence in government health agencies. For frontline health care providers and patients, the administration’s erratic approach to transitioning beyond a perpetual state of pandemic emergency could prove particularly problematic,” they added.

Biden has overseen the elimination of most of the pandemic-era protections implemented by his predecessor, Donald Trump, intended to shield Americans from the economic and health disaster that afflicted the country in 2020. That includes a moratorium on evictions and foreclosures, another on the payment of student loans, and expansions of unemployment, Medicaid, SNAP, and other federal benefits programs.

Last month, Biden audaciously declared the pandemic “over," even as an average of 400 Americans a day, or 12,000 per month, continue to die of the respiratory virus.

However, the decision will ultimately be based on how bad the outbreak gets in the coming weeks, as colder weather sets in across the United States and Americans move their activities indoors. Nearly the entire country has ended mandates on mask-wearing indoors, social distancing, and vaccination, although the Omicron variant has changed expectations regarding the extent to which the vaccine is able to prevent the spread of the virus.

A new Omicron subvariant, BQ.1.1, has been spotted spreading in the US in recent weeks. In New York City, it’s believed to be responsible for more than one-third of cases in a growing outbreak, and for 11% of all cases in the US over the last week. Since BQ.1.1 derives from the older BA.5 subvariant of Omicron, the new bivalent booster shots released by Pfizer and Moderna that target BA.5 are expected to provide some protection against BQ.1.1 as well.