In preparation for the October 1, 2013, open enrollment of the health insurance marketplaces, the federal government and states continue their ACA implementation activities. NHF is also continuing to advocate for the bleeding disorders community.
NHF Meeting on Essential Community Providers
In May, NHF public policy staff met with staff at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO), the office in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) implementing many parts of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). We discussed CCIIO’s implementation of the essential community providers (ECP) policy for federally facilitated and state-partnership marketplaces. As a reminder, the ACA designates several types of healthcare providers, including hemophilia treatment centers (HTCs), as essential community providers. This means that health insurance plans offered in health insurance marketplaces must include them in their networks. Following up on a letter we sent to CCIIO in May (available here), we advocated for HTCs to be included in all plan networks and for CCIIO to clarify its listing of HTCs in its database.
CMS Releases FAQs
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) periodically releases Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to clarify details surrounding the implementation of the ACA. CMS has recently released two FAQs: one on health insurance marketplaces and the other on essential community providers (ECP). The marketplaces FAQs focuses on CMS’ role in monitoring and oversight of health plan issuers in federally-facilitated and state-based marketplaces. The ECP FAQs provides a general overview, including what types of providers qualify, how health insurers should include them as part of the their qualified health plan networks and how CMS determines what is considered an ECP. To see more CMS fact sheets and FAQs, please click here.
CMS Marketplace Webinars Announced
CMS recently announced the schedule for a new webinar series providing information about the health insurances marketplaces, or “exchanges,” that will be created this fall. These webinars are broken down into two levels:
Level 1: Health Insurance Marketplaces 101 provides a one-hour overview of the ACA and a general introduction about marketplaces. It outlines who will be eligible for coverage and the basics of how the marketplaces will work.
Level 2: Understanding the Health Insurance Marketplace is a two-hour, more detailed, review of marketplace eligibility, enrollment, including the revised streamlined application process, and Medicaid expansion.
These webinars will take place in June and July. Click here to see the complete schedule. Note: You need to click on the link to register.
NHF’s public policy team will be attending these webinars, and we strongly encourage chapters and advocates to participate. For additional information about marketplaces and other training materials, please click here.
View the Health Insurance Marketplace Training Schedule here.
