For Immediate Release
Washington, DC – The ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC) today submitted comments to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) supporting the legally required end of the Transitional Reinsurance Program, and calling for the flawed process under which employers can challenge individuals’ premium tax subsidies to be suspended immediately.
As the only national association that advocates for large employers on health, retirement and compensation public policies at the federal, state and local levels, ERIC enhances the ability of its member companies to provide high-quality health care benefits to millions of active and retired employees, and their families. ERIC works to ease members’ ability to act as plan sponsors and remove unnecessary and burdensome administrative requirements that take valuable resources away from their employee benefit plans.
In its comments, ERIC calls upon CMS to end the Transitional Reinsurance Program at the end of 2016, as required by statute, and not to levy any additional mandatory reinsurance fees on non-Exchange group health plans thereafter. ERIC also asks CMS to immediately suspend the broken and completely ineffective process of Exchange subsidy notices and employer appeals that Congress intended to be used as a verification system to ensure only eligible individuals received premium tax subsidies.
‘The costs of stabilizing the Exchanges must not and legally cannot be shifted to working families who enroll in employer-sponsored group health plans outside of the Exchanges,’ said James Gelfand, senior vice president of health policy, ERIC. “We urge CMS and the Exchanges to work together to create a better, more efficient system to verify that only eligible individuals receive tax credits, and only employers that fail to offer affordable coverage are assessed tax penalties. The current system is broken and needs to be scrapped. And it is 2016 – this should all be handled via electronic systems, not paper sent through the mail.”
To read ERIC’s comments, click here.