NBPP2020

Last year there was much hand-wringing by myself and other healthcare wonks about whether or not the Trump Administration would attempt to kill off Silver Loading (and its even-wonkier cousin, Silver Switching). HHS Secretary Alex Azar and CMS Administrator Seema Verma kept sending out mixed and confusing signals about their intentions.

Eventually, Azar decided that while he doesn't like the practice, there wasn't enough time to change the rules before the 2019 Open Enrollment Period was set to begin, so he decided to take a pass for the time being.

Well, in yesterday's NBPP release, the HHS Dept. addressed the issue of CSR reimbursement funding directly...but they also made it clear that they're letting Silver Loading slide for another year:

Here's another wonky-but-important negative change which Trump's HHS Dept. is planning on making to the ACA exchanges starting in 2020:

We propose a premium adjustment percentage of 1.2969721275 for the 2020 benefit year, including a proposed change to the premium measure for calculating the premium adjustment percentage. Under §156.130(e), we propose to use average per enrollee private health insurance premiums (excluding Medigap and property and casualty insurance), instead of employer-sponsored insurance premiums, which were used in the calculation for previous benefit years, for purposes of calculating the premium adjustment percentage for the 2020 benefit year. The annual premium adjustment percentage sets the rate of increase for several parameters detailed in the PPACA, including: the annual limitation on cost sharing (defined at §156.130(a)), the required contribution percentage used to determine eligibility for certain exemptions under section 5000A of the Code (defined at §155.605(d)(2)), and the employer shared responsibility payments under sections 4980H(a) and 4980H(b) of the Code.

Here's what this seeming gobbledygook means, as explained by Matt Fiedler of the Brookings Institute:

Yesterday, the Dept. of Health & Human Services finally released the 2020 Notice of Benefit and Payment Parmeters, otherwise known as the NBPP, several months later than they were supposed to. There's a LOT of proposed changes to digest, and I'll write more about others soon, but I want to focus on one of the bigger ones here: Auto-renewals:

Currently, enrollees in plans offered through a Federally-facilitated Exchange or a State-based Exchange using the Federal platform can take action to re-enroll in their current plan, can take action to select a new plan, or can take no action and be re-enrolled in their current plan. Since the program’s inception, these Exchanges have maintained an automatic reenrollment process which generally continues enrollment for current enrollees who do not notify the Exchange of eligibility changes or take action to actively select the same or different plan.