President Joe Biden signed a bill on Monday ending the COVID-19 national emergency more than a month ahead of schedule, thanks to a push from House Republicans earlier this year.
But not much is slated to change despite warnings from the Biden administration in January that winding down the national emergency and the related public health emergency too quickly would wreak havoc.
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“An abrupt end to the emergency declarations would create wide-ranging chaos and uncertainty throughout the health care system — for states, for hospitals and doctors’ offices, and, most importantly, for tens of millions of Americans,” the White House had warned in a policy memo in January.
Biden had said he planned to end both emergencies in mid-May, and he initially opposed efforts by lawmakers to rescind the emergency declarations before then.
However, the effort gained bipartisan steam earlier this year despite those warnings, and 11 House Democrats sided with Republicans to advance the resolution ending the pandemic-era national emergency.
Later, after Biden suggested he would not veto the measure if it arrived at his desk, only 23 Senate Democrats opposed ending the emergency.
“It’s largely a symbolic measure,” Jen Kates, senior vice president and director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told the Washington Examiner. “Its biggest impact is the symbolism of ending it.”
Most of the programs that will end because the national emergency is over have either already wound down or are no longer broadly necessary.
For example, extended time frames for COBRA coverage, the type of health insurance employees can choose for a short time after they lose their jobs, will no longer be required 60 days after Biden signed the bill ending the national emergency; the need for longer COBRA coverage has fallen dramatically since the pandemic anyway.
Medicaid regulations require states to offer services covered by the program statewide if they offered them at all, but the national emergency allowed states to access a waiver target services locally. That waiver will expire.
Overall, however, the end of the national emergency will do little to change things for most people.
The end of the public health emergency, slated for May 11, could bring more dramatic changes.
Those include potentially ending the ability for patients seeking treatment with controlled substances, such as ADHD medicine, to get care virtually. The Drug Enforcement Administration has proposed allowing those arrangements to continue, but the authorization is set to lapse soon after the public health emergency does.
In addition, the federal government will stop shouldering all the costs of some COVID-19-related items.
“Many people are going to find that … they’re not going to get free at-home tests anymore,” Kates said. “In addition, people may start to face some cost-sharing that they didn’t used to when they go to get tests or treatments at a doctor.”
Some pandemic-era policies that still linger in some places won’t be affected by the end of the emergency declarations.
Companies that require proof of COVID-19 vaccination will still have the authority to do so.
The federal government can still allow its employees to work remotely — and many agencies still do. Private companies can continue the remote work arrangements they have established as well.
And vaccine mandates for foreign travelers coming to the United States will remain in effect moving forward. The Biden administration had already ended vaccine mandates or required proof of a negative COVID-19 test for U.S. citizens traveling internationally.
The politics of the pandemic shifted rapidly since Biden took office in 2021.
Biden’s reversal on opposing the congressional effort to end the COVID-19 national emergency was not the first time his administration seemingly folded in the face of strong evidence that their original pandemic-related position no longer had public support.
In April 2022, a federal judge struck down the Biden administration’s continuation of a mask mandate on airplanes, trains, and buses. Biden administration officials publicly vowed to fight the ruling and, despite some public celebration of the mandate’s end, maintained that they backed a return to masking requirements.
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While the legal process unfolded quietly in the courtroom, Biden administration officials rarely spoke about their stated support for the transportation mask mandate.
Nor did Biden administration officials publicly tout their support for continuing the pursuit of workplace vaccine mandates long after the Supreme Court struck those down in January 2022 as public sentiment about the pandemic was beginning to shift at a more rapid pace.