Your private health insurance company now covers at home COVID-19 testing
If you have health insurance and you need to purchase an at home COVID-19 test the federal government says your insurance company will now need to reimburse you.
In early December when President Biden made the announcement that your insurance company will be reimbursing you, no one really knew how this process was going to work.
Well earlier this week CMS, a division of Health and Human Services released information on how this all works.
Starting tomorrow (Saturday January15th) if you have private health insurance or are covered by a group plan you are allowed eight tests per month so a family of four on the same plan would be allowed thirty-two tests a month.
These tests must be over the counter and approved by the FDA. You won’t need a prescription to buy a test and get it covered. There is no limit on the number of tests including at home tests that are covered if ordered or administered by your doctor or health care professional.
Depending on your health insurance you will either need to pick up one of these tests from a specific participating pharmacy where they would be free at the point of sale. Or you would be able to buy the COVID-19 test at the pharmacy then file the receipt, fill out a claim form, and get a reimbursement from your health insurance company.
If your health insurance does have a participating pharmacy you need to use to get the free test, but you decide to go out of network and get a test from somewhere else the insurance company only needs to reimburse you up to 12 dollars per test.
The bottom line is every insurance company will run this program differently so you will need to check with them for reimbursement protocols.
If you have a state run Medicaid plan or CHIP the government has already been requiring your COVID-19 testing to be covered without any cost to you.
Medicare will pay for COVID-19 diagnostics testing meaning you would need to go to a state run facility or your doctors office to be tested and the test will be run through a lab.
If you have no insurance, Health and Human Services says 50 million tests will be distributed to home community centers and Medicare clinics at no cost to you.
