UnitedHealthcare faces backlash for new ER visit policy
Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani reports on Moderna asking the FDA to clear the COVID-19 vaccine for adolescents 12-17, plus UnitedHealthcare will delay plans to deny coverage for some E.R. visits after facing backlash.
Video Transcript
- Moderna is looking to expand emergency use of its COVID-19 vaccine to children 12 years and older. We want to bring in Anjalee Khemlani for a little bit more on this. And Anjalee, where are the regulators expected to come down on this?
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Yeah, so they're looking at it right now. We also know that Pfizer, for example, is also asking the same, really about 12 to 17-year-old age window is what they're looking to target. At least by the fall, you know, in time for the school year. So that's really the timeline that the FDA has to look at right now. Meanwhile, we also know with a few other vaccine updates today, a panel was looking at the discussion around the younger than 12 population and what to do about that, whether or not extended periods of safety observation was needed.
Meanwhile, we know we learned yesterday that Pfizer-- sorry, the US government is going to be buying half a billion doses of Pfizer and distributing that. We now found out it's going to be going largely to low-income countries. And a quick note that the White House did tweet earlier that all of these are going to be American-made, specifically laying out the states, before they get shipped abroad. So a lot of vaccine news for the day.
- There's other health news, too. I mean, the UnitedHealthcare stepped into the proverbial New York dogwalker prime with their updated emergency room plans. What's going on now with that, Anjalee?
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Well, they have in fact said that they're going to hold off on implementing that. They did say initially, they were targeting a July 1 rollout date. But with all the pushback that we've seen in the past two days between health advocates, health experts, and specifically a letter from the American Hospital Association outlining the idea that retroactive denials is not a good idea, a lot of experts saying that it's going to, in large part, deter individuals from seeking care when they need it, which could lead to even costlier visits.
A really big discussion around the use of emergency rooms has been unfolding for quite some time. Health experts have, for quite some time, been looking at how to curb the use of it, while also not really telling people not to come, and some concerns about that. The company saying that they're going to wait until the end of the national public health crisis, which does not yet have an end date, in order to roll out that policy.
- All right, Anjalee, thanks so much.
