What More Could CMS Do for COVID-19 Response? Health Affairs Blog Offers Suggestions

People with disabilities and disability providers seeking to navigate the COVID-19 outbreak, and the three legislative packages Congress passed this month to address the outbreak, will find this HealthAffairs blog post informative. In addition to a comprehensive summary of the actions taken by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the blogpost shares additional steps the agency could take. It states:

“CMS could do much more on its own, within its existing authority, to ensure that private health insurance is widely accessible to those who need it. CMS should authorize a special enrollment period (SEP) for HealthCare.gov, significantly increase outreach and advertising, broaden the premium nonpayment grace period, streamline the subsidy eligibility verification process, work with the Treasury Department to revisit the family glitch, and broadly implement the coronavirus coverage requirements in the Families First legislation. The Trump administration should also delay implementation of the most burdensome parts of the program integrity rule, withdraw the Medicaid Fiscal Accountability Regulation, abandon any potential changes to the automatic reenrollment process for 2021, halt implementation of the public charge rule, and consider non-enforcement of premium tax credit reconciliation for 2020.”

Readers wishing for more details on each of those suggestions will find them in the post, linked to above.