Per the Office of Personnel Management, “The effective date of the Open Season change is the first day of the first full pay period in January. For annuitants this date will always be January 1.” It turns out that Sunday January 3, 2021, is the first day of the first full pay period in January 2021. How convenient.
The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, does include the three standard FEHBP appropriations provisions — a prohibition on applying full Cost Accounting Standards coverage to FEHB contracts (Sec. 611), an abortion coverage restriction (Secs. 613, 614), and a limited contraceptive coverage mandate (Sec. 726) which the Affordable Care Act has overridden. What’s more this new law extends the option of FEHBP and FEGLI coverage to 120 tribal grant schools thereby filling a coverage gap erroneously created by the Affordable Care Act. This option is exercised by the tribal employers who must make the minimum federal civil servant government contribution toward the benefit coverage.
For the past 20 years or so, the FEHBP has offered plan members transitional care protection pursuant to President Clinton’s Bill of Consumer Rights which states in pertinent part as follows:
Consumers who are undergoing a course of treatment for a chronic or disabling condition (or who are in the second or third trimester of a pregnancy) at the time they involuntarily change health plans or at a time when a provider is terminated by a plan for other than cause should be able to continue seeing their current specialty providers for up to 90 days (or through completion of postpartum care) to allow for transition of care.
FEHB plan carriers intending to terminate a network provider for cause generally could comply with this requirement by giving affected members 90 days advance notice of the change.
It turns out that Section 113 Division BB of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, includes an Affordable Care Act amendment ensuring continuity of care. The requirements of this new law bear similarities to the FEHBP’s transitional care protections. However, as always, the devil is in the details. For example, the new law’s transitional care provisions apply to any provider contract termination, including passive non-renewals, whether triggered by the provider or the payer, with the limited exception of payer termination for fraud or failure to meet applicable quality standards. FEHB plans and OPM have a year to sort out the details before the new requirements take effect on January 1, 2022.
In other news —
The Senate moved forward today on overriding President’s veto of the FY 2021 National Defense Authorization Act but not on the $2000 COVID-19 relief direct stipend per the Wall Street Journal:
Moving through the procedural steps for overriding Mr. Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act could take up much of the Senate’s time before Sunday. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), in a push for a stand-alone vote on increasing the size of the direct checks, has stopped Mr. McConnell from fast-tracking votes on the NDAA override. As a result, the final vote on the NDAA may not take place until Saturday due to a series of procedural steps.
The Senate took one of those steps late Wednesday, voting 80-12 to move forward with the bill, in another show of broad, bipartisan support for the legislation Mr. Trump vetoed.
Bleeping Computer updated us on how the federal government is addressing the SolarWinds backdoor hack.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has ordered all US federal agencies to update the SolarWinds Orion platform to the latest version by the end of business hours on December 31, 2020. CISA’s Supplemental Guidance to Emergency Directive 21-01 demands this from all agencies using Orion versions unaffected in the SolarWinds supply chain attack.