Health-Exchange-Alert

The COVID-19 public health emergency is expected to continue through the end of 2021, Acting HHS Secretary Norris Cochran wrote in a Jan. 22 letter to governors, signaling the temporary 6.2% bump in federal Medicaid matching funds and a slew of other Medicare and Medicaid emergency waivers put in place during the pandemic will not end soon.

Democratic congressional health leaders have pledged to work with the Biden administration to reverse the 11th-hour final exchange rule issued by Trump’s HHS that aims to unravel key elements of the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

The Biden administration's COVID-19 response strategy boosts funding for community health centers and offers more help to safety net providers and nursing homes, and it asks CMS to consider increasing its pay rate for vaccine administration and to take any steps necessary to promote coverage of safe and effective COVID-19 treatments and care.

President Joe Biden unveiled a national COVID-19 testing strategy that aims to dramatically increase the number of Americans tested as part of a new seven-pronged massive public health effort to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

While Democrats’ new control of the Senate has upped the chances that President Joe Biden can make strides on his health policy agenda through Congress, heath care experts and actuaries point out that one of the new president’s priorities -- raising the value of the Affordable Care Act’s tax credits by benchmarking them to gold-level, rather than silver-level, plans -- can be done administratively.

President Joe Biden signaled Wednesday (Jan. 20) that his administration will prioritize pro-LGBTQ+ health policy by signing an executive order directing federal agencies to ensure that federal antidiscrimination statues covering sex discrimination also prohibit discrimination due to sexual orientation and gender identity.

On his first day in office, President Joe Biden took immediate action to freeze all agency rules and guidances issued under the Trump administration that have not yet taken effect, sending out a memo from White House Chief of Staff Ronald Klain that also asks agency heads to postpone and reconsider any rules that have yet to be published in the Federal Register.

The Biden administration is expected to fortify existing policies and increase funding to deal with social determinants of health.

Affordable Care Act supporters as expected sued the Trump administration last week for allowing Georgia to leave healthcare.gov and instead rely on brokers and agents to enroll consumers in health plans starting in 2022.