Payers, Providers, and Patients – Oh My! Is Crowell & Moring’s health care podcast, discussing legal and regulatory issues that affect health care entities’ in-house counsel, executives, and investors. In this episode, hosts Payal Nanavati and Joe Records sit down with Todd Rosenberg and Samuel Krause to discuss ERISA preemption of state regulation of pharmacy

On August 26, North Carolina passed a law allowing small businesses to band together to offer group health insurance through association health plans (“AHPs”). The Small Business Health Care Act, passed without the governor’s signature, authorizes the formation of large group health plans for association members, including small businesses and sole proprietors. However, these plans can be implemented only if they do not violate federal law, and the federal regulations authorizing this form of AHPs were struck down at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia earlier this year. While this decision is currently on appeal at the D.C. Circuit, North Carolina has included in its legislation a back-up plan that the state can pursue expansion of AHPs in case the federal regulations remain struck down.

The U.S. Department of Labor issued regulations last June expanding the situations under which AHPs could be formed. These regulations were created in response to a push by the Trump administration to provide greater choice in health care coverage. Proponents of the regulations believed that the expansion of AHPs could make coverage more affordable and accessible for small business employees and sole proprietors. The regulations, however, were met with significant criticism on the grounds that AHPs would undermine the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), create instability in the ACA marketplaces, and lead to gaps in patient protection and coverage. This March, as noted in a prior C&M alert, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia struck down these regulations.Continue Reading North Carolina Enacts Association Health Plan Law

In a victory for the Trump Administration, on July 18, 2019, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia upheld a 2018 regulation designed to expand the sale of short-term, limited duration insurance policies and rejected claims that the regulation unlawfully undermined the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) and would destabilize the ACA marketplaces. Plaintiffs have indicated that they will appeal the decision.

Short-term, limited duration insurance policies are not required to comply with ACA protections, including those relating to essential health benefits like maternity care and prescription drugs. Originally designed to fill very short gaps in coverage, these types of plans were not included in the definition of individual health insurance under the ACA. These short term policies can be designed with high out-of-pocket maximums, low coverage caps, and significant benefit gaps. They can also deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions. For these reasons, these policies can be marketed at a lower cost. Plaintiffs representing insurers, providers, and consumer groups sued the administration arguing that the availability of short term plans would draw away younger and healthier individuals from risk pools and put insurers at an unfair disadvantage by forcing them to compete with short term plans that would not be required to comply with the same ACA protections.Continue Reading Court Upholds Short-Term, Limited Duration Insurance Policy Rule

On January 1, 2019, portions of the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Final Rule expanding the availability of Association Health Plans (AHPs) went into effect. AHPs allow small businesses to band together and negotiate better deals when buying insurance for their members.

The partial government shutdown hasn’t slowed the raging debate over how states are to implement the DOL’s final rule. On December 28, 2018, a federal judge ordered litigation concerning the rule to continue despite the shutdown.

States have reacted to the final rule in dramatically divergent ways. Some states believe that AHPs will make it finally possible for small employers to offer affordable healthcare options for their employees. Other states worry that AHPs will destabilize the individual insurance marketplace. They predict that healthy people will join AHPs because they are less expensive than other insurance options, and this shift will leave sicker people in a smaller pool with higher premiums.  
Continue Reading Taking the Pulse of New Association Health Plans

Iowa has enacted legislation to permit the offering of certain health benefit plans that would not be subject to the restrictions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The bill combined two separate measures, each intended to expand access to association health plans (AHPs) that are exempt from many of the ACA’s protections. First, the new law would allow small employers to band together to form associations that would be eligible to offer members’ employees coverage as if they were a single large employer group, which would be subject to less burdensome regulation under the ACA. Second, a health benefit plan sponsored by a nonprofit agricultural organization domiciled in Iowa (the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation) and covered by a third-party administrator that has administered the organization’s health benefits plan for more than 10 years (Wellmark Blue Cross & Blue Shield) is exempt from the definition of insurance that is subject to regulation by the state insurance department.

Recently, AHPs have been touted by opponents of the ACA as a tool to avoid its effects for larger covered populations. Iowa’s measure follows an executive order by President Trump last fall directing the administration to, among other things, promote the use of AHPs. In response to that order, the Department of Labor proposed a rule that would expand the definition of AHP to allow employers greater access to AHP coverage. As we noted in a previous post, several states have pressed the idea through comments to that proposed rule that expanded access to AHPs would create opportunities for employers to offer more affordable coverage.

The impact of Iowa’s enactment remains to be seen. Critics of the measure have expressed concern that it will water down consumer protections by exempting coverage from ACA requirements that plans cover essential health benefits, such as maternity and mental health care. Although plans could continue to include such benefits, they would not be legally obligated to do so, and could cut costs by eliminating coverage for broad categories of health care.
Continue Reading Iowa Enacts Legislation to Broaden Access to Association Health Plans

The Department of Labor’s proposed rule on association health plans (AHPs), issued in response to an October 12, 2017 Executive Order, has received almost 900 comments, including from several states and the District of Columbia (see, e.g., comments from Alaska, Iowa, Massachusetts, Montana, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). States emphasized the need for clarity in the rule and affirmation of states’ long-standing authority to regulate insurance including both solvency and consumer protection issues. Iowa, for example, attributed the more than 40-year success of a multiple employer welfare arrangement (MEWA) to both the entity’s interests to serve its members and the Iowa Insurance Division’s authority to ensure that MEWAs are “adequately solvent and following fair trade practices” and argued that continued robust state insurance oversight is critical to successful AHPs.

Last week, the Iowa Senate approved two bills which, if passed by the Iowa House of Representatives, would expand the availability in the state of AHPs, a type of MEWA covered by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). The legislation would allow for Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield to administer an AHP for the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation and could threaten the membership of Medica, the only issuer of coverage through Iowa’s exchange.Continue Reading States Seek Control over Association Health Plans in Comments on DOL Proposed Rule; Iowa Senate Approves Bill Expanding Availability of Association Health Plans—Potentially to the Detriment of ACA Exchange Plans

In what appears to be one of the largest class action settlement in the history of ERISA litigation in New Jersey, a federal judge approved $33 million settlement, including $11 million in attorneys’ fees, between Horizon Healthcare Services, Inc. (“Horizon”) and plaintiff chiropractors.

The underlying lawsuit stemmed from allegations that Horizon made “across-the-board” denials of

On May 26, the Departments of Health and Human Services (“HHS”), Labor (“DOL”) and Treasury (collectively, the “Departments”) issued Part XXVII of their FAQs about Affordable Care Act implementation. This latest FAQ provides additional guidance regarding limitations on cost sharing under the ACA, as well as further information and guidance regarding the ACA’s “provider non-discrimination” provision.

With regard to the ACA’s limitations on cost sharing (i.e., the maximum annual limitation on cost sharing/out-of-pocket costs), the FAQ notes that the maximum annual limitation will rise in 2016 to $6,850 for self-only coverage and $13,700 for other than self-only coverage (up from the 2015 amounts of $6,600 for self-only coverage and $13,200 for other than self-only coverage). The FAQ then notes that HHS, in the final HHS Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters for 2016 (“2016 Payment Notice”), had clarified that the self-only maximum annual limitation on cost sharing applies to each individual, regardless of whether the individual is enrolled in self-only coverage or in coverage other than self-only.

Notably, the FAQ then goes on to expand this “clarification” from the 2016 Payment Notice to all non-grandfathered group health plans, including non-grandfathered self-insured and large group health plans. As a result, for all non-grandfathered group health plans, the self-only limit applies on an individual-by-individual basis, whether the individual is enrolled in self-only, family or some other variant of coverage. Hence, for example, if an employee enrolled in family coverage in 2015 incurs $10,000 in cost sharing, that individual would be limited to the self-only cost-sharing limit for 2015 (i.e., $6,600), and “the plan is required to bear the difference” between the $10,000 in actual cost sharing and the applicable limit – in this case, $3,400. The FAQ is unclear as to how a plan will “bear the difference” in such a situation, and hence there is a lack of certainty as to whether this would involve separately tracking (and limiting) each individual’s cost sharing against the overall self-only limit and/or refunding directly to the individual the “difference.” The FAQs make clear that this interpretation applies to all non-grandfathered group health plans (including high deductible health plans) and is to be applied prospectively, for plan or policy years that begin in or after 2016.Continue Reading DOL, HHS & Treasury Issue Guidance on Cost Sharing and Provider Non-Discrimination Under ACA