A state lawmaker has introduced a bill that would require insurance companies to cover the Covid-19 vaccine after comments by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stirred doubts about whether the shot would continue to be recommended by the CDC.
Senator Andrew Gounardes, who represents the 26th District in Brooklyn, introduced the bill on Tuesday to mandate that plans cover the vaccine, the way the state already mandates coverage for flu, polio, measles and other diseases, and require Medicaid to cover the shot in pharmacies. The legislation is a response to apparently wavering messaging on safe uses of the vaccine coming from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its leader in the Trump administration in recent weeks.
Last week, Kennedy said the CDC would stop recommending the vaccine for children and pregnant women but the agency continued to list the shot on its schedule of vaccines for children ages 6 months to 17 years old.
The legislation was designed with those uncertainties in mind. In a memo from the sponsor attached the bill said the “mixed messaging” diminished public confidence in the vaccine necessitating the state to step in to “maintain equitable vaccine access.”
Eric Linzer, president and CEO of the state Health Plan Association, an insurance trade group, acknowledged the importance of the Covid-19 vaccine in promoting public health but said insurance companies would follow the recommendations of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which is scheduled to meet later this month. “So imposing new mandates at this time is premature,” he told Crain’s.
The bill was introduced with fewer than two weeks left of session, before lawmakers adjourn to their districts. To become law, it would have to pass in both the Senate and Assembly but no companion legislation has been introduced in the lower chamber.
Gounardes hopes to get the bill across the finish line in the next week and is working with Assembly Member Karines Reyes, a Parkchester Democrat, to sponsor the bill, he said.
“It’s not very controversial,” he said, noting that insurance companies already cover the vaccine. “This is really just a prophylactic measure to make sure that if the federal government makes a change, we can still have the authority to mandate that coverage in state.”
