Next year, Kansas will start to require employers, individuals and health insurance companies to pay some costs associated with COVID 19 testing. The State Department of Health and Environment announced it will start phasing out free screening tests for people who aren’t showing COVID 19 symptoms or who haven’t potentially been exposed. The Agency said it expects the policy to begin March of 2022.
The Department says it can’t sustain having public health agencies cover the cost of all testing, indefinitely. They initially allocated $141 million in Federal funds to make COVID 19 tests available and to support commercial and university labs to expand processing and sampling capacity. But, infections from the Delta Variant depleted the funds faster than expected.
The changes will mainly affect programs used by employers to test 10% of their workers on a regular basis. It will also affect programs by community organizations offering free rapid tests.
