Biden executive order opens new Obamacare ‘Special Enrollment Period’

President Biden signed a pair of executive orders on Thursday, including one that re-opened access to the Obamacare marketplace through a special enrollment period (SEP).

Biden asserted that the executive orders were meant to “undo the damage Trump has done. There’s nothing new that we’re doing here other than restoring the Affordable Care Act and restoring Medicaid to the way it was before Trump became president. He changed and made it more inaccessible, more expensive, and more difficult for people to qualify for either of those two items.”

As part of the executive order, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will enact an SEP from Feb. 15 through May 15, 2021.

‘The time is now’

An SEP allows uninsured Americans to immediately sign up for health care through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace. In the U.S., all but 12 states and the District of Columbia have a federally-run marketplace, meaning that reopening it would take an executive order.

During the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the number of people who used the ACA exchange through an SEP was “higher for the 2020 coverage year than for any of the prior coverage years.”

Approximately 485,000 consumers gained coverage during that period, a whopping 52% increase year over year. The largest gain in SEP enrollment was in April 2020, which saw an 139% increase in enrollment year over year. A record 20.5 million jobs were lost that month in the U.S.

Some who lost coverage were able to enroll in Medicaid, COBRA, or a provider through the ACA marketplace as part of an SEP, but only for a certain period of time.

Medicaid allows low-income Americans to obtain health care coverage at a fairly low cost. But not all states have the same requirements, especially since 12 states didn’t adopt the Medicaid expansion allotted by the ACA. And, some states have implemented work requirements in order to qualify for Medicaid, despite the fact that a majority of the enrollees are either elderly or suffering from some kind of disability.

Along with reopening a special enrollment period, Biden’s order directs agencies to “re-examine policies that undermine protections for people with pre-existing conditions (including COVID-19 complications), policies that make it more difficult to enroll in Medicaid and the ACA, policies that undermine the health insurance marketplace or other markets for health insurance, and demonstrations and waivers under Medicaid and the ACA that may reduce coverage or undermine the programs, including work requirements,” according to the White House press release.

“I’m not initiating any new law, any new aspect of the law,” Biden said. “This is going back to what the situation was prior to the former president’s executive orders. ... Of all times we need to reinstate access to, affordability of, and extensive access of Medicaid is now. We are in the middle of this COVID crisis so the time is now.”

The second executive order enacts protections to women’s health care. It immediately rescinds the Mexico City policy (global gag rule), which “requires foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to certify they will not ‘perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning’ using funds from any source (including non-U.S. funds) as a condition of receiving U.S. government global family planning assistance.”

The order also directs HHS to take immediate action on deciding whether or not to rescind the regulations under its Title X family planning program.

Adriana Belmonte is a reporter and editor covering politics and health care policy for Yahoo Finance. You can follow her on Twitter @adrianambells.

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