Uninsured adults will lose an option this August to get vaccinated against COVID for free, weeks before an updated vaccine is expected to be released going into respiratory virus season.
Launched in 2023 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Bridge Access Program began as a way to connect U.S. adults with little to no health insurance to COVID vaccines. It was set into motion just as those vaccines shifted from federal administrators to commercial markets, which complicated access for many who had previously enjoyed more freedom over where they received their dose.
Rather than anyone being able to get a free shot wherever they could get an appointment, people with health coverage can seek out COVID vaccines at sites approved by their insurance plans – or pay out of pocket.
Raynard Washington, who serves as health director for Mecklenburg County in North Carolina, said the rollout of COVID vaccines earlier in the pandemic demonstrated a "wonderful example of equity in health" because "it wasn't an issue of cost."
But the end of federally covered access to COVID vaccines last fall suddenly placed doses out of reach for millions of people without insurance or adequate coverage. In 2022, 26 million Americans – about 8 percent of the U.S. population – were estimated to have no health insurance, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
In and around Charlotte, North Carolina, more than one in 10 residents lack health insurance, Washington said. He saw how the Bridge program helped uninsured individuals receive vaccines that protected them against the risk of developing severe COVID infections after the pandemic public health emergency ended.
North Carolina's expansion of Medicaid last December also helped connect people to the health care coverage they needed, but "there's still a number of adults who will be left out," Washington added.
READ MORE: How uninsured adults can still get vaccinated against COVID
Since September, more than 1.4 million COVID vaccine doses have been administered across the country through the Bridge Access Program, including to more than 812,000 people without insurance, according to an email between a CDC spokesperson and a CBS News reporter. It was modeled after the successful Vaccines for Children program, which began in 1994 in response to a measles epidemic and has prevented roughly 30 million hospitalizations and hundreds of millions of illnesses, according to CDC estimates.
But in March, congressional negotiations over the nation's budget translated to $4.3 billion being rescinded from the Department of Health and Human Services in COVID supplemental funding. This move prematurely ended the Bridge program, which was already set to expire in December and would have covered vaccines for one more respiratory virus season this fall. Now the program will run out of funding in August.
State and local public health departments are looking for ways to step in, but these are the same institutions that have been chronically underfunded for years going into the pandemic. Now that COVID-related funds have dried up, those same departments have even fewer resources to draw upon.
Without the Bridge Access Program, Washington said, "We don't have adequate resources locally to purchase vaccines for all who are uninsured."
"It speaks to the importance of moving toward universal vaccines," he said.
Federally qualified health centers may also be able to step in, and a pool of federal dollars referred to as infrastructure funds in the Section 317 Immunization Program could help narrow the gap, said Chrissie Juliano, executive director of the Big Cities Health Coalition. These funds are designed to improve vaccine access, safety and effectiveness and can cover outreach and related programs, but they cannot fix everything.
"We need to think creatively, and we need to bring vaccines or other preventive services to the people who need them the most," Juliano said.