The rollout of new COVID-19 vaccines is being obstructed by insurance and supply roadblocks, as customers experience issues with getting insurers to agree on vaccine coverage. The Department of Health and Human Services wrote a letter to insurers stating, "Your obligation as a plan or issuer to ensure that your members have coverage for COVID-19 vaccines without cost sharing is not conditional upon parties' compliance."

Yahoo Finance Health Care Reporter Anjalee Khemlani breaks down the news. For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Video transcript

[AUDIO LOGO]

SEANA SMITH: It's a new era for COVID-19 vaccines with the drug now being rolled out commercially, but several supply and insurance roadblocks are causing some confusion for people out there and also for pharmacy. Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani joining us now with those details. Anj, what do we need to know?

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: That's right, Seana. Unfortunately we're hearing reports of individuals getting denials of coverage for their COVID vaccine or running into problems when trying to get insurance coverage. And to that end, the Health Department wrote a letter to insurers on Friday asking them to make sure that these coverage requests and these claims do go through, regardless of whatever is going on internally for-- following the process.

They said, quote, "Whether the problems are directly within your organization's control or the control of your partners, your obligation as a planner or issuer is to ensure that your members have coverage for COVID-19 vaccines without any cost sharing and it's not conditional on other parties' compliance."

So saying that the insurers really do have to take the lead role here in ensuring that the government's promise to ensure free vaccines as the market first turns commercial remains in place. And to help do that, there has been some focus on exactly which covers-- which payers have which rules.

So if you take a look at the private market, for example, vaccines and visits to pharmacies or to places, sites where they do have vaccines are supposed to be covered with no cost sharing. Medicaid and Medicare, of course, Medicare specifically for the Part B, no cost sharing for in-network sites.

And then for the uninsured adults, the Health Department did launch a public-private partnership earlier this year, $1.1 billion invested in ensuring that adults do have access to these vaccines and that they will not incur any cost at the site of the vaccine. Meanwhile, kids also guaranteed.