As part of the agency’s efforts to facilitate the nation’s response to COVID-19, a public health emergency (PHE), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced a policy that will allow issuers to offer temporary premium reductions for individuals with 2020 coverage in the individual and small group markets, states a CMS press release.
CMS is providing this additional flexibility to help ensure that consumers struggling to pay their premiums can continue to be covered and receive the care they may need during this time.
“Today’s action is just the latest in a series of flexibilities CMS has extended to health insurers to help them support their enrollees during this unprecedented time,” said Administrator Seema Verma.
This temporary policy will be in effect until the end of 2020. Issuers are generally prohibited under current federal requirements from changing premiums for health insurance coverage offered in the individual and small group markets after the start of the benefit year.
The announcement follows CMS’ adoption of several relaxed enforcement policies providing issuers the flexibility they needed to assist their enrollees impacted by the ongoing PHE. Under one of the enforcement policies CMS adopted, issuers that offer coverage through HealthCare.gov were permitted to extend premium payment deadlines and delay cancellation for non-payment of premiums. As another example, CMS adopted a non-enforcement policy that permitted issuers to prepay to enrollees a portion or all of the estimated Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) rebate for the 2019 MLR reporting year.
