When the COVID-19 vaccines entered the commercial market last fall, the federal government introduced a program to make the vaccines accessible to people with limited coverage or no insurance. That program, which provided millions of free injections to low-income people, is now being stopped, US health officials said.
The Bridge Access program is set to end in August, months earlier than local health departments and health centers expected, as pandemic-era funding from Congress expires. Biden administration officials are seeking permanent funding so that routine vaccinations can remain free for adults through a program similar to the long-running Children’s Vaccines program, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official said via email. .
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Leaders at health centers and departments said that without the Bridge Access Program, they are worried about how they will secure funding for vaccines in preparation for the winter respiratory virus season, when hospitalizations and deaths tend to increase. Many low-income Americans may not be able to afford vaccines for the new coronavirus and its myriad variants. Updated vaccines will be formulated to target these strains, but pandemic-era funding will disappear.
Money is not unlimited, but COVID is still with us, said Frederica Williams, CEO of Whittier Street Health Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center that primarily serves lower-income communities in Boston. The program used Bridge Access funds to administer the vaccines.
About a fifth of the centers’ patients are uninsured, including many young migrants from Haiti and Central and South America, Williams said. This does not include others such as shared drivers or restaurant staff who may have some health insurance but do not receive insurance coverage for vaccines.
Last fall, CDC Director Mandy Cohen visited the Whittier Road Health Center to promote the updated COVID-19 vaccine. The sudden cut in funding was surprising to Williams. As of this week, she said, the health center has not received notice of the termination of the Bridge Access program.
Leaders of the National Association for Community Health Centers, a nonprofit advocacy group, said they knew the program was temporary but were surprised to hear it was ending this August. As dangerous respiratory diseases like influenza, RSV and COVID-19 increase in the colder months of this year, health centers will continue to immunize people every day, Sarah Price, the association’s director of public health integration, said in a statement. Health centers will either stock these vaccines or refer to resources within their community in order to address access barriers and close the loop, she said.
Since Bridge Access launched on September 13, 2023, it has provided more than 1.4 million free COVID-19 vaccines through retail pharmacies, community health centers and public health departments across the U.S. David Daigle, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an email. The CDC did not respond to questions about whether the agency told health centers and departments that the Bridge program would end in August.
After August, there may be a small amount of free vaccine available through the health department’s immunization programs, but the supply would be very limited, Daigle said, in an email first shared on social media by a CBS reporter. News. We don’t know yet if manufacturers will have assistance programs for patients.
Vaccine makers Novavax and Pfizer said by email that they plan to evaluate their accessibility options for U.S. consumers after this change and help make vaccines accessible to uninsured and underinsured patients. Moderna did not respond to a request for comment.
When a federal panel widely recommended the updated vaccine in September, many people faced hurdles trying to pay for the shots. Big American pharma was charging over $100 per dose. In that time, the Bridge Access Program became a beacon, cited by many on social media, offering pictures to people who were struggling to afford them.
The loss of the program has health officials worried about an increase in cases.
This is creating a barrier that could lead to much larger resurgences of COVID, said Dr. Walter Orenstein, associate director at Emory University’s Vaccine Center. Orenstein previously served as director of the US National Immunization Program with the Vaccines for Children program that began in the 1990s and foresees problems if vaccines are not made more accessible.
I hope I’m wrong. But I think (it’s) better to remove barriers to access when we have such safe and effective vaccines than to prevent people from wanting to get those vaccines.
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The U.S. has hit a record low for uninsured people, the Department of Health and Human Services announced in August. However, about 7.7% of the population, or about 25 million people, still do not have health insurance. Among adults 18 and older, 11% are uninsured. Experts say many without insurance are people of color and immigrants. The uninsured also tend to be younger, have lower incomes, and live in southern states that have not expanded access to Medicaid. This demographic group includes millions of undocumented people who do not qualify for federal health coverage.
In addition, millions of adults have less than solid health coverage through their employer, and many earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. People in this category are likely to have struggled to get a COVID-19 vaccine without Bridge Access funding.
Vaccine funding is ending as Medicaid is being rolled back across the U.S. Nearly 22 million people who had Medicaid during the pandemic have disenrolled since May 10, according to KFF, a nonpartisan health policy organization.
North Carolina is an exception, where the state legislature expanded Medicaid to adults at the end of 2023. The state has seen less decline in Medicaid enrollment than anywhere else in the country. The state covered the cost of the preventive vaccinations, according to Raynard Washington, director of the Department of Public Health for Mecklenberg County, which includes Charlotte.
About 13% of the county’s adult population is uninsured, Washington said. These patients are disproportionately Latino and foreign-born. Many of the county’s uninsured, who also received the shots, are working jobs without benefits or earning too much to receive Medicaid.
Washington, who chairs the Major Cities Health Coalition, a consortium of top U.S. health officials, thinks Congress should work toward improving public health systems instead of abandoning initiatives that have been in place since the pandemic. . He said it is important to invest in vaccines to protect yourself and
He said it is important to invest in vaccines to protect yourself and others at risk from serious diseases.
“In the case of COVID, of course, we know that there are people who are still very vulnerable to serious illness,” Washington said. “So these vaccines are, in many ways, lifesavers for some people.”
. The Washington coalition supports the Biden administration’s adult vaccine proposal, which has failed to pass.
Now is not the time to shy away from COVID-19 prevention, he said.
We should invest in both times of crisis, and when they were not in crisis, he said.
The next round of COVID-19 vaccines aimed at targeting dominant strains has not been released. When it does, Washington expects local and state jurisdictions to cover the cost with other resources.
At the Whittier Street center in Boston, Williams said he recently received a call from two patients who tested positive for COVID-19.
The Haitian husband and wife Williams had met through a local church program asked about antiviral drugs available through the state’s public health department. They were uninsured. She told them the program they were asking about ended in March, but the Whittier center would cover their treatment regardless of insurance.
The need for care remains, even if the pandemic has eased, she said.
We just have to find a way, as we always have, to make sure we continue to stay true to our mission, she said.
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