White House Aims to Limit Access to Short-Term Health Plans: The Kiplinger Letter

To help you understand what is going on in the healthcare sector, rollbacks of Trump administration regulations for short-term health plans and what we expect to happen in the future, our highly experienced Kiplinger Letter team will keep you abreast of the latest developments and forecasts (Get a free issue of The Kiplinger Letter or subscribe). You'll get all the latest news first by subscribing, but we will publish many (but not all) of the forecasts a few days afterward online. Here’s the latest…

The Biden administration wants to curtail access to short-term health plans. A draft rule would limit the duration of such plans to four months and would prevent consumers from buying another short-term health insurance plan from the same carrier in the same calendar year. However, they could still purchase different short-term plans consecutively for up to 36 months.

This rule would essentially involve restoring several Obama-era regulations that were rolled back by the Trump administration. Under Trump, consumers were able to retain short-term plans for a year and renew them for up to three years.

Short-term plans are often cheaper than Obamacare-compliant ones and serve as a stopgap option for people who are between jobs or self-employed. But they also come with several drawbacks, such as excluding folks with preexisting conditions and denying claims after expensive medical treatment.