after covid-19 vaccines transitioned to the commercial market last year a federal program stepped in to help adults without insurance or those whose plans didn't fully cover the cost of a shot get a free one providing more than a million and a half of the shots Nationwide the initiative was supposed to last until this December but the funding has dried up and the program is now slated to end at the end of the month senior correspondent Joanna Gagis reports the state no longer has Bridge funding and there will be no vaccines available for patients who are historically uh treated through that bridge program that's the bridge Access program run by the CDC that provided free covid vaccines to the uninsured and underinsured it was expected to run through December but the CDC recently announced it would end on August 31st the impact is going to be that those individuals who um were eligible for using the a bridge Access program will no longer have access to vaccines the covid vaccine specifically uh unless they pay out of pocket and that could come at the cost of about 100 to 150 bucks a pop it's a concern you know and especially if you have a family of four you're talking about four times that multiple of $15 to $140 per shot it's an expense it's likely that those individuals will make a decision perhaps not to receive the vaccine the bridge access program has delivered about 1 and A2 million free covid vaccines since it started and it begs the question what do you believe the answer should be when it comes to how these vaccines are paid for is the responsibility still on state federal governments to foot this bill or do we need a better different model I think as a country we need to decide where Health Care fits into our values and if we firmly believe that Healthcare is a right for every American then I think it's incumbent Upon Our elected officials to figure out a way to make sure that they have access to that but right now it's a split system of access says Dr Ian Liber where it's partially commercial and there's more resources available to those who are able to afford commercial insurance by either paying out of pocket or through their employer and then we have those that rely on the federal government uh to cover their health care and then there's a bunch of people who kind of fall in between those two worlds and don't have access to the healthcare they need been mediologist Stephanie Silvera would also like the bridge access program to continue especially as a summer covid surge could lead to even higher numbers in the fall there is an economic and health benefit to providing vaccines for free if we provide robust preventive health care we can lower our per capita cost or per capita spending on health outcomes right it's always cheaper to prevent an illness than it is to treat an illness we're at a point where many people if maybe it's fair to say most people have been infected at one point or another are we seeing that this has created some level of immunity where uh the vaccines are less important in the short run right acutely if people have been sick recently within about the past four months they do have some protection from that but we do know that that protection wains which is why we need these booster shots we need annual vaccinations and she adds for the most vulnerable they are still at high risk of being hospitalized or you know death is still a risk factor for some individuals the CDC just approved the latest version of fiser and moderna's vaccines that protect against the latest flirt variant they haven't been released to the public yet but when they do pharmacist Yas Shaw says the state programs Federal programs they need to keep active we need to keep funding them and we need access to keep the virus down so that we can be a a productive public the new vaccines are expected sometime next week but for now will come at a cost for the Uninsured and underinsured I'm Joanna Gagis NJ Spotlight News support for the medical report is provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey an independent lensee of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association [Music]