CMS proposes a policy that would add sex-trait modification to the list of items and services that may not be covered as essential health benefits beginning in plan year 2026.
In other words, they're throwing transgender folks under the bus, which is hardly surprising but is still appalling; I'll have a separate writeup about this soon. It doesn't mean that insurance carriers can't cover gender-affirming services, but it does mean those services can't have APTC subsidies applied towards them if they're included in the policy.
This was actually announced a few weeks ago, but I was knee-deep in my Congressional District-level Enrollment Breakout Pie Chart project so I didn't get around to posting about it until now.
Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a proposed rule to address the troubling amount of improper enrollments impacting Affordable Care Act (ACA) Health Insurance Marketplaces across the country. CMS’ 2025 Marketplace Integrity and Affordability Proposed Rule includes proposals that take critical and necessary steps to protect people from being enrolled in Marketplace coverage without their knowledge or consent, promote stable and affordable health insurance markets, and ensure taxpayer dollars fund financial assistance only for the people the ACA set out to support.
BREAKING: In response to doctors' lawsuit, Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, orders CDC, NIH, and FDA to put back up websites and datasets cited by the doctors in their lawsuit as having been relied upon and pulled down without notice.
