Executive Orders Seek to Roll Back Health Plan Requirements
October 16, 2017
New rule-making could expand association health plans and allow health reimbursement arrangements to pay plan premiums.
President Trump has signed an executive order (EO) directing the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Treasury to review regulations issued under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and to explore ways to:
- Expand rules for association health plans (AHPs) to allow more employers to ban together and purchase health care plans, including across state lines.
- Create rules that allow employees to use health reimbursement arrangement (HRA) funds to pay for health care premiums, for plans employees purchase on the individual market, such as through the ACA's Marketplace exchanges.
The EO also requests that federal agencies look to revise existing ACA regulations to allow individual and small-group market plans that don't adhere to all of the ACA's health coverage requirements.
Another EO Ends Cost-Sharing Reduction Payments
President Trump also announced he wouldend payments to insurers for subsidizing low-income marketparticipants, saying the payments are illegal because Congress hasn’t appropriated the money. These so-called cost-sharing reduction payments, which subsidized health plans purchased on the ACA's Marketplace exchanges, are sometimes called "extra savings" and are distinct from the premium tax credits that also subsidize policies purchased through an exchange.
This EO does not affect the penalties that large employers are subject to when a full-time employee is not offered ACA-compliant coverage and receives a premium tax credit for a policy purchased through a Marketplace exchange.
The EO makes no changes to the employer mandate or ACA information reporting obligations. Employers with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees should continue preparations for 2017 ACA annual reporting, due in early 2018.
Rule Revisions Will Take Time
Opponents of the ACA praised the new flexibility in health coverage, especially for plans offered in the individual and small group market (generally, the insurance market for employers with up to 50 employees), while ACA supporters raised concerns about higher costs for those who remain in individual and small group plans.
The EO"is likely to have little effect on mid- to large-size employer-sponsored health benefits," said Chatrane Birbal, senior advisor, government relations, at the Society for Human Resource Management. "Small employers may receive expanded ability to offer insurance to their employees through association health plans or have the ability to offer money through an HRA that employees can use to purchase health services."
"For most large employers and their employees, the executive order will result in no change in health coverage," agreed Steve Wojcik, vice president of public policy at the National Business Group on Health, an association of large employers. As for smaller employers and some large employers, "the proposed changes may make it easier for employers to afford coverage and to help their employees pay for coverage if they buy it on their own."
Few Immediate Changes
The EO largely does not make changes itself. "Rather, it directs agencies to issue new regulations or guidance," Birbal said. Proposed regulations will follow the standard public notice and comment process, which requires publication in the Federal Register followed by a public comment period. This notice and comment period could take months, she noted.
Association Health Plans
According to a White House press release, the EO directs the Secretary of Labor to consider expanding access to association health plans (AHPs) so that employers can form groups across state lines that share coverage in a common plan.
"A broader interpretation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) could potentially allow employers in the same line of business anywhere in the country to join together to offer health care coverage to their employees," according to the White House. "It could potentially allow employers to form AHPs through existing organizations, or create new ones for the express purpose of offering group insurance."
Employers participating in an AHP would not be able to exclude any employee from joining the plan and cannot develop premiums based on health conditions.
"The direction the order takes is to liberalize the rules to build large insurance pools of small employers. Spreading the risk across large numbers of participants in an insurance pool is thought to bring insurance premium stability," said Perry Braun, executive director at Benefit Advisors Network (BAN), a Cleveland-based consortium of health and welfare benefit brokers. "It will be interesting to see what new entrants enter the market to aggregate small businesses to build the large pool of clients."
While the EO instructs the Secretary of Labor to consider proposing regulations or changing guidance to allow more employers to form AHPs, "it isn't clear yet what these changes will be or how they will intersect with other federal and state regulations," said Beth Halpern, health law partner at Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C. "These changes could be attractive to small employers with relatively healthy employees, and who would not need the full range of benefits offered by the ACA's exchange plans."
However, "a concern related to AHPs is that they will undercut or destabilize the individual markets," by offering less comprehensive benefits than individual or small group plans, said Arthur Tacchino, principal and chief innovation officer with SyncStream Solutions, a compliance technology firm in Baton Rouge, La. If AHPs attract healthier people who are comfortable with a skimpier plan, "it could lead to higher premiums for individual market and small-group plans," he explained.
If the federal government allows insurance sold nationwide through an association of small employers, "the AHP would have to comply with far fewer standards" than current small-group market plans, according to a statement by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation that supports expanding health care coverage to low-income and uninsured Americans. Currently, for example, small-group market plans must provide coverage that includes 10 essential health benefits, while nationwide association health plans would not be bound to do so.
Health Reimbursement Arrangements
The EO directs the departments of the Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services to consider changes to employer-funded HRAs.
HRAs are employer-funded accounts that reimburse employees for health care expenses, including deductibles and co-payments. Unlike with health savings accounts, HRA funds remain with an employer when a participant is no longer employed at the organization.
The rule revisions could potentially allow workers to use HRA funds to pay premiums on health plans purchased in the individual market. Currently, only small businesses with fewer than 50 full-time employees can provide stand-alone HRAs that may be used for this purpose, as long as certain conditions are met.
"Many employers were upset when the Obama administration shut down the ability for employers to just provide money on a pretax basis for employees to purchase their own health insurance on the open market—a trend that many saw as the wave of the future," said Brian Pinheiro, chair of the employee benefits group at law firm Ballard Spahr in Philadelphia.
"There was a fear that employers may simply offer a basic HRA instead of comprehensive health care coverage," Tacchino explained. "They would then contribute a certain dollar amount, allow the employer to make its pretax contribution to an HRA rather than sponsor a health care plan, and then let the employee use these funds to purchase health care on the open market."
The revised rules "may have significant implications on the expansion and use of health reimbursement arrangements," said Harrison Stone, general counsel at ConnectYourCare, a Baltimore-based provider of services for account-based health plans. Although the executive order is only the first step in enhancing HRAs, "it shows that the administration recognizes the value that HRAs can bring to the individual health care consumer, as well as the employer."
Looking at the possible effects of allowing HRAs to be used to pay premiums on individual market plans, "it will depend on the regulations issued by the Secretaries of the Treasury, Labor and Health, but these changes would work in the opposite direction of the AHP proposals by encouraging employers to help pay for their employees' coverage outside a group plan instead of offering a plan themselves," said Halpern.
This could be an appealing option for employers with less-healthy employees who have higher health care costs, she noted, "but would exacerbate divisions in the insurance marketplace by putting more of the higher-cost patients in the individual market and, therefore, potentially driving up premiums in that market."
