Agencies Finalize Rules to Enhance Flexibility for Grandfathered Group Health Plans

On December 11, 2020, the DOL, HHS and IRS issued final rules that amend certain requirements for grandfathered group health plans to maintain their grandfather status. The rules provide such plans with greater flexibility to make changes in response to increases in health coverage costs.

As background, the ACA allows certain group health plans that existed as of the law’s enactment on March 23, 2010, to be treated as grandfathered health plans. This treatment exempts the plans from some ACA mandates. To preserve grandfather status, these plans are restricted in their ability to make plan design changes or increase cost sharing. The 2015 grandfathered plan rules outline these limitations.

The final rules follow July 15, 2020, proposed rules, which have been adopted without substantial change. The 2015 existing regulations are modified in two respects.

First, the rules provide an alternative method of measuring permitted increases in fixed amount cost sharing. Under the existing regulations, increases for fixed amount cost sharing other than copayments (e.g., deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums) cannot exceed thresholds based upon the Consumer Price Index measure of medical inflation. Specifically, the 2015 rules define the maximum increase as medical inflation (from March 23, 2010) plus 15 percentage points. However, this component of the CPI index includes price changes for Medicare and self-pay patients, which are not reflected in grandfathered group health plan costs.

The alternative standard relies upon the premium adjustment percentage, rather than medical inflation. The premium adjustment percentage is published by HHS in the annual notice of benefit and payment parameters and reflects the cumulative historic growth in private health insurance premiums from 2013 through the preceding calendar year. As a result, this measure may better reflect increases in underlying costs for grandfathered group health plans.

This new measurement method does not replace the current standard. Rather, an employer can use the method that yields the greater result. Therefore, grandfathered plans are allowed to increase these out-of-pocket costs at a rate that is the greater of the medical inflation adjustment percentage or premium adjustment percentage, plus 15 percentage points.

Second, the final rules permit a grandfathered group HDHP to increase fixed-amount cost-sharing requirements, such as deductibles, to the extent necessary to maintain HDHP status without losing grandfather status. This change was designed to ensure that participants enrolled in such coverage remain eligible to contribute to an HSA.

Employers who sponsor grandfathered plans should be aware of these final rules, which will be applicable beginning on June 15, 2021.

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