On October 12, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Acting Secretary Eric Hargan and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma released a statement announcing that cost-sharing reductions (CSR) payments were to be immediately discontinued based on a legal opinion from the attorney general.
In part, the statement noted that “we believe that the last Administration overstepped the legal boundaries drawn by our Constitution. Congress has not appropriated money for CSRs, and we will discontinue these payments immediately.”
The move is part of a series of efforts by the Trump administration to dismantle the Affordable Care Act (ACA) following repeated legislative failures to repeal and replace it. Last week also saw an Executive Order encouraging new types of health plans that wouldn’t be subject to certain ACA restrictions as well as two interim final rules that expand the availability of religious exemptions to the ACA’s contraceptive mandate.