Health Affairs September 20, 2021
On September 17, 2021, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Treasury Department issued a final rule to bolster access to marketplace coverage and reverse several Trump-era regulatory changes under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This is the Biden administration’s first full rule on the marketplaces and provides additional insight into its priorities for the ACA more broadly. The rule was accompanied by a press release and fact sheet.
The final rule touches on a range of topics and is technically the third installment of the annual payment notice for 2022. But it is more akin to the Trump administration’s “market stabilization” rule, which was issued early in 2017 to reverse Obama-era changes and adopt policies...