A week from today, the U.S. government will no longer officially consider COVID-19 a public health emergency. The end of that era will trigger quite a few changes in the worlds of health care and insurance, but for many people, one of the most immediate impacts will be the end of reimbursable access to free at-home tests each month through insurance.
Insurers may continue to cover some or all costs related to at-home testing, but they won’t be required to do so after May 11. To save you the task of wading through a mess of confusing coverage documents, I contacted some of the U.S.’ largest health insurers to find out what they’re planning to do once the public health emergency ends.
To make a long story short: Most will not cover at-home tests beginning May 12. If you want to have some inventory, I suggest ordering your last eight guaranteed swabs while you still can.
The length of your telomeres—segments of DNA inside your cells—has long been suspected to be a predictor of health and longevity. As the New York Times reports, new research in the New England Journal of Medicine has upended this theory, showing that long telomeres could instead be linked with certain cancers.
