WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced two wide-ranging health care executive actions on Thursday — one expanding access to reproductive health care and another supporting enrollment in the individual insurance market and Medicaid.
The two actions would instruct the Department of Health and Human Services to reconsider existing Trump administration policies.
President Joe Biden is expected to sign the orders Thursday afternoon.
The first order would focus on the 2010 health care law, and would direct HHS to open a special enrollment period on HealthCare.gov for individuals to enroll in insurance coverage from Feb. 15, 2021, through May 15, 2021.
National open enrollment ended Dec. 15, 2020, but the White House says the new period is necessary because millions of unenrolled Americans are eligible for federal assistance. The White House has not yet provided projections on how many would benefit or what the marketing and outreach budget would be.
A nominee for Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator, who would be at the helm of much of this policy, has not been named yet.
A Biden White House official told reporters Thursday this order will also instruct HHS to review and reconsider policies that are antithetical to the purpose of coverage under the health law and Medicaid.
Those policies that would be under review would include any efforts to undermine protections for pre-existing health conditions or the individual market or that make receiving marketplace coverage harder or more expensive.
In addition, the Biden White House official stressed the importance of protecting access to Medicaid, and said CMS would be instructed to review any waivers that reduce coverage. This will likely include Medicaid waivers that some states have sought to add work requirements as a condition of Medicaid expansion coverage.
The Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments this year related to the Trump administration’s approval of work requirements in Arkansas and New Hampshire.
This executive action would formally kick off the regulatory process.
Biden’s planned actions on reproductive health include ending funding restrictions to nongovernmental organizations that perform or promote abortions outside the United States, and starting the process to lift a Trump administration rule that prohibits funding to family planning providers who perform abortions or provide abortion referrals.
The first change, to what’s often called the Mexico City Policy, prohibits international aid to NGOs that support abortion abroad. It has been instituted during every Republican presidency since Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Former President Donald Trump revived the policy in 2017, and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced an expansion in 2019 that would extend the restrictions to foreign organizations that fund those NGOs.
Under Trump, any NGOs that received federal funding could not provide abortions, abortion counseling or referrals, even with separate funding streams. The money allocated for women’s health was unchanged, but distributed differently among organizations.
Abortion rights advocates have said shifting this funding away from these groups could have contributed to rising rates of HIV/AIDS.
The second major step would start the process of rolling back changes to Title X, the nation’s federally funded family planning program.
Currently, organizations that provide or refer for abortions are barred from winning federal funds, even if those funds are not used for abortion.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said that these steps, while necessary, will not ensure that all family planning planning clinics that have had to close will be able to reopen.
“The honest answer is due to the number of variables in play, we’re not sure,” she told reporters prior to the announcement. “I can say for certain that the gag has caused incredible harm to patients across the country.”
Planned Parenthood officials and other advocates hope more administrative action on women’s health is in store.
