HHS Releases New Rules on Plan Transparency

At the end of last week, the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) released new rules on plan transparency for qualified health plans offered through the exchanges. These rules affect the Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC) which are available for each plan offered on the exchange. The SBC is important as it is the first critical step for a consumer to evaluate the plans and the new rules modify the template for the SBC as well as make it more readily available. The announcement from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) can be found here. If you want to download the new rules, click here and if you want to read a summary fact sheet of the rules prepared by CMS, click here.