Congress
- Reconciliation Part 2 – Republican House leaders met this week with an influential group that it is interested in pursuing further cuts to public health programs. Politico reported that the group briefed staff on potential policies such as reducing Medicaid FMAP as well as site neutral payments for Medicare.
- Budget Bill- Politico reported that there still hadn’t been any movement on the budget bill, which is further evidence that it is unlikely that any policy (e.g., ePTC extension) would happen in September.
- CBO – CBO published more detailed estimates of the effect of the recently passed 2025 Reconciliation Act (Public Law 119-21). Overall, CBO found that the number of uninsured would increase by 10 million by 2034. CBO estimates that about 7.5 million of that number will be related to the Medicaid provisions, 2.1 Marketplaces, 0.1 related to Medicare, and 0.3 interactions of the various policies.
Executive Branch
- The Trump Administration released a memo that they intend to redo (again) regulations around short-term limited duration plans. In the meantime, they’d be exercising non-enforcement on the existing regulations. In other words, if a DOI doesn’t enforce the current regulations there will be no penalties. In practice this means that you could see more STLDI enrollment growth in states that do not have their own state laws on STLDIs
- CMS requested input from NAIC on Section 1333 of the ACA. Section 1333 allows states the option for pursuing Health Care Choice Compacts or agreements that let health insurers sell individual market qualified health plans to any state in a compact without having to comply with each state’s laws. CMS also announced it was actively considering regulations on the issue. Georgetown’s Chirblog has a good summary of Section 1333 compacts.
