The U.S. Department of Labor is preparing to post a draft regulation that could ease health plan information delivery rules.
The Trump administration wants the DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration and other federal agencies to make it easier for employers to use electronic delivery systems. EBSA officials appear to be moving toward letting employers make electronic delivery the default delivery option.
EBSA sent the draft delivery regulation to reviewers at the federal Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in May. OIRA says the draft may show up in the Federal Register by the end of July.
See also: New 2027 ACA draft rules are out. 8 predictions about the impact
OIRA, a division of the White House Office of Management and Budget, held a regulation impact review teleconference meeting with benefits industry representatives in June.
The list of attendees included three OMB officials, five DOL officials and representatives from the ERISA Industry Committee, the Business Group on Health, UnitedHealth Group and the Environmental Paper Network.
Those industry reps’ organizations and others have asked DOL officials to make creating an e-delivery default option for health plans a priority.
“Default e-delivery would free employers, unions and plan administrators from costly and outdated paper requirements that consume up to 11 billion sheets of paper each year,” the organizations told DOL officials in a letter included in the regulation review meeting packet. “The significant savings from default e-delivery can be reinvested to strengthen health benefits and improve services for American workers.”
What it means: A draft regulation that could let employer health plans make e-delivery for plan information the default might appear within the next few weeks.
The players: ERIC and the Business Group on Health represent employers.
The Environmental Paper Network is a group that promotes efforts to reduce the use of paper.
E-delivery supporters’ case: The regulation review meeting includes a report from ERIC.
ERIC hired Ipsos, a research consulting firm, to conduct a survey of 1,009 people ages 18 through 65 who are enrolled in health plans governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
About 91% of the participants said they most frequently view information about their health benefits through electronic systems, rather than on paper, and 78% of the participants said e-delivery should be the default information delivery option.
Some have suggested that e-delivery options may be more popular with younger workers than with older workers, but ERIC said 71% of the survey participants ages 45 through 64 agreed that the e-delivery option should be the default option.
Credit: Source link
