You might have one week to refill on free at-home COVID-19 assessments

WWhen the COVID-19 public well being emergency expires on the finish of the day on Could 11, many pandemic-era guidelines and packages will finish. Amongst them is a assure that Medicare and personal insurers will cowl the price of as much as eight month-to-month at-home COVID-19 assessments per particular person, a coverage that has been in impact since 2022 and has contributed to a surge in at-home diagnoses.

With no federal rule, most well being insurers are free to decide on whether or not to reimburse some or all the prices of residence testing sooner or later. Meaning some People can nonetheless get free assessments, relying on insurance coverage protection, whereas others need to pay retail costs of round $10 per take a look at (or round $20 per field of two, relying on what number of are bought).

Here is how some large insurers plan to navigate the tip of the general public well being emergency:

• A Cigna consultant has not responded to TIME’s requests for remark as of press time. Nonetheless, info launched on Cigna’s web site says it can not cowl at-home testing beginning Could 12, 2023.
• A UnitedHealthcare consultant had no remark earlier than press time, however its web site states that over-the-counter testing will probably be closed after November 11. For instance, California state regulation extends the free testing dedication by November 11, 2023.
• An Aetna consultant declined to remark, however info printed on-line says they won’t cowl at-home testing beginning Could 12.
• Native chapters that make up the nationwide Blue Cross Blue Defend Affiliation will reimburse at-home testing by Could 11, confirmed Sean Robbins, government vp and chief company affairs officer, in a press release to TIME. Thereafter, Blue Cross Blue Defend plans might impose “affordable limitations on the usage of testing.”
• California-based Kaiser Permanente is providing as much as eight free assessments monthly to members in that state by November 11, 2023, excluding these lined underneath Medicare Benefit plans. For folks exterior of California, “protection depends upon state or native mandates [and] on-network and off-network protection for COVID-19 vaccines, testing and remedy,” a Kaiser Permanente consultant stated in a press release.
• A spokesman for the Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid Companies stated that after the general public well being emergency ends, “some Medicare Benefit plans may cowl and pay [over-the-counter] COVID-19 testing as an additional advantage.” People lined by Medicaid or the Youngsters’s Well being Insurance coverage program are eligible without spending a dime testing by September 2024.

Even when your well being plan stops the price of residence testing, you could possibly buy it with funds from a well being financial savings account or versatile spending account. You might also have the ability to get free kits at your library, well being division, or by one other neighborhood group. And the federal authorities remains to be sending out free kits to households who have not but claimed their allotted swabs.

Fast and PCR assessments will nonetheless be obtainable from pharmacies and physician’s places of work, however customers pays some or all the value relying on insurance coverage.

The surest strategy to free trials? Prime up your insurance coverage plan earlier than Could 12th.

write to Jamie Ducharme at jamie.ducharme@time.com.