Today, President Donald Trump issued a presidential directive to broaden the development of business association health plans, ease restrictions on short-term medical insurance and expand employer health care reimbursement accounts. The memorandum starts the rulemaking process, which will forge the details of the plans’ requirements. The White House is attempting to expand access to health insurance policies that face fewer regulations after several defeats of ACA repeal this year.
The new regulatory push on adjusting health insurance offerings was signaled by the White House earlier this year but deferred by ongoing and eventually stalled legislative action on repealing and replacing the 2010 health care law.
The order does two important things.
First, it asks cabinet officials to look for ways to expand short-term, limited-duration insurance. These plans generally come with less coverage than health plans sold through the ACA’s individual market, but they have grown in popularity since the ACA’s passage — even though people who buy them face federal penalties because their coverage does not meet the ACA’s standards.
The Presidential memo urges regulators to reverse an Obama administration policy that capped the duration of short-term policies at three months. If that’s enacted, those policies could return to lasting up to almost a year in many states.
Secondly, the order directs agencies to ease rules that allow small businesses, and possibly individuals, to band together in arrangements called “association health plans.” Such arrangements do exist today in some capacity, but expanding them could cause legal headaches for the Administration.