Gianforte asks Biden to end Covid public health emergency

Gov. Greg Gianforte and a consortium of Republican governors sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Monday asking him to end in April the COVID-19 public health emergency that has been in place since March 2020.

The current public health emergency was extended last year until Jan. 11, 2023, but the 25 governors who wrote to Biden said they believe he will extend it another 90 days into April. The governors ask in the letter it be the last extension.

The public health emergency allowed people to continually enroll in Medicaid to receive health care coverage during the pandemic and for states to receive federal matching dollars for newly enrolled people. But the federal government approved a plan last December from Montana to end the continuous coverage once the public health emergency ends.

A report published earlier this month by the Kaiser Family Foundation found Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) enrollment increased nationwide by 27 percent from February 2020 to August 2022 but slowed in the later months that were analyzed.

Gianforte and the other governors argued in the letter that the influx of enrollees has cost states hundreds of millions of dollars because they have to increase their states’ non-federal matching dollars. They said some people have not disenrolled themselves from the program even if they have returned to receiving health insurance through their job or Affordable Care Act marketplaces.

“It has been nearly three years since the federal government has declared a national emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the governors wrote. “While the virus will be with us for some time, the emergency phase of the pandemic is behind us.”

The U.S. Senate voted 61-37 in November to terminate the public health emergency, but the resolution is awaiting House action. Both of Montana’s senators voted in favor of the measure.

An August 2021 report from the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services estimated about 2.6 percent of Montanans covered under the Medicaid expansion could lose coverage when the continuous eligibility ends.