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SIIA Submits Official Comments to Federal Agencies Regarding the Proposed Rule on Grandfathered Health Plans SIIA was one of a select group of industry organizations who submitted official comments to the Federal agencies responsible for drafting and ultimately implementing regulations dealing with grandfathered health plans. The issued interim rule dealt with allowable modifications plans may make that will not jeopardize its status as a grandfathered health plan. Under the PPACA, plans in existence on 9/23/10 are considered grandfathered and as such, exempted from certain newly-enacted plan requirements. For many plans, having to comply with those requirements would lead to significant cost-increases for both the plan-sponsor as well as plan participants. With the help of member input, SIIA officially submitted comments on the proposed rule. Our comments center on our industry expertise on how certain aspects of the proposed rule would negatively hurt plans. We also issued comments on issues the departments listed as to be decided on. The official comments can be found here. [Printable pdf format] Proposed Regulation That Would Have Significantly Changed a Plan Definition Revoked Earlier this year, the Department of Labor issued a proposed rule to limit the definition of a welfare plan. This proposed rule was in response to the recently enacted pay-or-play law enacted by the city of San Francisco, which the Obama administration was in support of, reversing the Bush administration's opposition. By changing the definition, States and localities would have had the legal justification to enact universal healthcare programs such as pay-or-play laws. The Department of Labor has now withdrawn this proposed rule; ending the possibility of it being enacted. The Department concluded that such State and local laws were now unnecessary due to the programs enacted under PPACA. While the withdrawal of this rule removes any Federal support of State and local laws not being in violation of ERISA preemption, legal precedent for doing so was recently increased when the Supreme Court decided not to hear a legal challenge to the San Francisco law. ### |
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