By: Nina Owcharenko Schaefer
The official end of the COVID-19 emergency is near. That’s good news. It’s now up to the states to finish the job.
The House of Representatives voted Feb. 1 on a joint resolution ending the national COVID-19 emergency and a bill to terminate Health and Human Services’ public health emergency declaration.
At the same time, the Biden administration has also announced plans to end both of those emergencies in May.
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers took emergency steps to help mitigate its effects. Then-President Donald Trump in March of 2020 declared a national emergency, which opened up a variety of new authorities across the federal government. The secretary of HHS also declared a public health emergency, which allows the agency to waive certain requirements.
This cascade of emergency steps manifested itself at the state and local level as well.
Congress also reacted by enacting a stream of temporary legislative changes as well. Notably, lawmakers passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act of 2020, which linked several changes to the duration of the public health emergency. In that bill, Congress provided states with emergency federal Medicaid funding, but in exchange prohibited the states from removing individuals from the Medicaid program, regardless of eligibility changes.
The legislation also allowed states to increase food stamp allocations to beneficiaries and suspended work requirements on able-bodied individuals as a condition for receiving food stamps.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/02/06/covid-19-national-emergency-is-nearly-over-its-time-for-states-to-roll-back-overly-generous-benefits/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=covid-19-national-emergency-is-nearly-over-its-time-for-states-to-roll-back-overly-generous-benefits