After a lengthy commentary period that saw few changes from the proposed rule, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Serves (CMS) has released its “Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters” for health insurance plans being sold on the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) exchanges for 2020.
The notice actually lowers user fees on the federal and state health insurance marketplaces, or exchanges, by a half a percentage point — from 3.5 to 3 percent on the federal exchange and from 3 to 2.5 percent on the state exchanges.
At the same time, it endorses what has come to be known as “silverlining” — the practice by insurance companies of raising rates and out-of-pocket limits on the Silver plans sold under Obamacare to cover the absence of cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments, which were ended by the Trump administration in 2017.
The final rule also allows for the continuation of policy auto-renewal.
Participating insurers now have only until June 19 to submit their health plan options for 2020.