The Return to Consumer Protections in Health Insurance: The Department of Labor Reverses Trump-era Rule on Association Health Plans

The Trump-era regulation that expanded the availability of association health plans has been rescinded by the Employee Benefits Security Administration, which was inconsistent with certain consumer protections in the Affordable Health Care Act. The latest Labor Department rule issued this week reverses lax criteria put in place by the Trump administration that made it easier for employer groups or associations to be treated as an “employer” when they offer multi-employer group health insurance. This effectively allowed more employers to offer health insurance that avoided several critical ACA consumer protections.

Assistant Secretary for Employee Benefits Lisa M. Gomez explained that the Department of Labor now believes that the provisions of the 2018 Association Health Plan Regulations were inconsistent with the Administrative Procedure Act and exceeded the department’s authority. As a result, the department rescinded the entire 2018 rule to ensure compliance with federal law and improve comprehensiveness of coverage.

A 2018 Trump administration rule that expanded Association health plans was struck down by a federal judge in 2019 and has never been fully implemented. The department’s decision to rescind the rule is intended to resolve uncertainty regarding the status of the standards established by the rule and to maintain AHP’s long-standing pre-decision guidance that has been consistently supported by court decisions.

In response to the final rule, Virginia Foxx, chairwoman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, criticized the administration for moving backward, not forward, in giving Americans more ways to access high-quality health care at low cost. The administration’s decision to rescind