Friday, January 13, 2017

TGIF

Ah, the second week of the NFL playoffs. Hopefully this week's games will be better than last week's. Of course, the stakes are higher.

Govexec.com published an article on OPM's 2018 call letter.  It would be interesting if OPM just issued a one paragraph call letter telling plans to submit proposals by May 31 and then see how creative the carriers can be thanks to a pretty vibrant market.

Yesterday the ACA regulators proved me wrong by issuing ACA FAQ 37 which principally concerns arcane aspects of health reimbursement accounts.  Perhaps they can reach FAQ 40 by next Thursday.

In that regard, the Wall Street Journal reports that this afternoon the House of Representatives
took its first procedural step toward repealing the Affordable Care Act, passing a budget that directs lawmakers to start drafting legislation to dismantle much of the 2010 health care law.  Already approved by the Senate, the budget resolution passed the House on a 227-198 vote. Nine Republicans voted with 189 Democrats to oppose the budget. No Democrats voted for it.  The measure will start the substantive work on measures to repeal portions of the health law, instructing two House and two Senate committees to come up with proposals by Jan. 27.
The Senate committees named in the resolution are Finance and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and the named House committees are Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce. The full resolution text is available here if you are interested.

No comments: