Biden’s Power to Make Insurance Companies Pay for Covid Tests Is Clear

President Biden is ordering private health-insurance companies to cover the cost of Covid-19 testing, which is surging primarily because the Omicron variant is highly infectious. (Thankfully, as our Jim Geraghty details, Omicron’s virulence has not lived up to the doomsday predictions of many experts.) On Monday, the three federal departments primarily responsible for the convergence of issues regarding insurance and public health — Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services (HHS) — issued insurance-coverage guidance that Biden had said would be forthcoming.

A friend asked me by what legal authority the president may direct private insurance companies to cover medical tests. One can certainly understand why that question would be at the front of people’s minds: We are at the moment waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on Biden’s Covid-vaccine mandates — specifically, on two cases that ask whether the president, and by extension the federal government, has constitutional authority to require private citizens to submit to vaccination. Yet there’s something peculiar about Biden’s directive to the insurance companies: In announcing it, the White House was vague at best about the president’s legal basis for issuing it.

About the Author

Andrew C. McCarthy

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, an NR contributing editor, and author of Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency.

Featured Tags

President Biden is ordering private health-insurance companies to cover the cost of Covid-19 testing, which is surging primarily because the Omicron variant is highly infectious. (Thankfully, as our Jim Geraghty details, Omicron’s virulence has not lived up to the doomsday predictions of many experts.) On Monday, the three federal departments primarily responsible for the convergence of issues regarding insurance and public health — Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services (HHS) — issued insurance-coverage guidance that Biden had said would be forthcoming.

A friend asked me by what legal authority the president may direct private insurance companies to cover medical tests. One can certainly understand why that question would be at the front of people’s minds: We are at the moment waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on Biden’s Covid-vaccine mandates — specifically, on two cases that ask whether the president, and by extension the federal government, has constitutional authority to require private citizens to submit to vaccination. Yet there’s something peculiar about Biden’s directive to the insurance companies: In announcing it, the White House was vague at best about the president’s legal basis for issuing it.

About the Author

Andrew C. McCarthy

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, an NR contributing editor, and author of Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency.