Short-Term Plans Rule Flips the Political Narrative on Health-Insurance Protections

The usual narrative is that Democrats support consumer protections and Republicans oppose them. Today’s short-term plans final rule flips that narrative: Republicans are expanding consumer protections, and Democrats are opposing them.

Today’s rule reverses a 2016 Obama rule. The Obama rule reduced consumer protections in short-term plans by exposing sick patients to medical underwriting. Before that rule, consumers could purchase short-term plans that lasted 12 months. If they developed a serious illness, their plan could cover them until the next ObamaCare open enrollment period, when they could purchase coverage without medical underwriting. The Obama rule restricted short-term plans to 3 months. It prohibited “renewal guarantees” that protect enrollees who fall ill from medical underwriting when they purchased a new short-term plan. As a result, the Obama rule left short-term plan enrollees who got sick with no coverage for up to 9 months: those who purchased a plan in January, and developed a serious illness in February, would lose their coverage at the end of March, and have no coverage until the following January. (Source: NAIC) This was by design: the Obama administration wanted to expose sick people in short-term plans to medical underwriting and lost coverage as a way of forcing consumers to buy ObamaCare coverage instead. That’s at least a little messed up.

Today’s rule allows short-term plans to last 12 months and offer renewal guarantees. It therefore allows short-term plans to protect the sick from medical underwriting for an additional 9 months—indeed, “issuers may offer coverage under a short-term, limited-duration insurance policy for up to a total of 36 months, without any medical underwriting or experience rating beyond that completed upon the initial sale of the policy”—and allows renewal guarantees to protect them from medical underwriting indefinitely. Protecting the sick from medical underwriting has long been a goal of Congress.

So, to recap, Republicans are expanding consumer protections, and Democrats are opposing an expansion of consumer protections.

Weird, isn’t it?