Richard H. Hughes, IV, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in STAT News, in “Balkanization of Vaccine Policy Raises Concerns About Vaccine Uptake, Insurance Coverage, Experts Warn,” by Helen Branswell. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
Richard Hughes, a lawyer with the firm Epstein Becker Green who follows vaccine policy closely, said the recommendations of the various professional organizations are solid, and offer a reasonable alternative, under the circumstances, for ACIP guidance.
“Those are good guidelines and if you direct providers back to those, if you direct patients to say, ‘This is a good source of truth, this is what’s relevant for you,’ I think that that’s a pretty simple way,” he said. “This is going to go on for years, potentially. And so the contingency plans need to be just very, very, very practical and not overengineered.”
“But we need to really make sure that payers are going to maintain coverage,” said Hughes, who consults for vaccine manufacturers and worked for Moderna for a time during the Covid pandemic.
That last point Hughes raised is a key question: Will insurers pay for vaccines that the CDC drops from or doesn’t add to its vaccination schedules? By law, insurers must pay for vaccines that are recommended by the ACIP, if the recommendation is accepted by the CDC.
