Barbara Underwood (Poto: Rick Kopstein/NYLJ)
New York state Attorney General Barbara Underwood filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Labor on Thursday over an effort by the Trump administration she said is aimed at hampering the administration of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Underwood, leading a coalition of 12 state attorneys general, wants the department to reverse a rule allowing small businesses and self-employed individuals to collectively participate in an "association health plan" (AHP), or multi-state, multi-employer health plan.
In the past, employers could join single-state AHPs, but not multi-state AHPs.
The Trump administration promulgated the rule in June, saying the AHP program could help employers save money on health benefits. The new AHP regulations could help employers provide health coverage without complying with all ACA coverage requirements.
"You're going to save massive amounts of money and have much better health care," Trump said in June.
The attorney general coalition is arguing the opposite. They say the AHP rule will cause many relatively low-risk employers to leave the traditional health insurance market. That would drive up the cost of health coverage for the employers that stay in the traditional health insurance market, the coalition says.
"The Trump administration's AHP Rule is nothing more than an unlawful end run around the consumer protections enshrined in the Affordable Care Act — part of President Trump's continued efforts to sabotage our health care system," Underwood said in a statement about the suit. "Our lawsuit today seeks to safeguard federal protections under the ACA that help guarantee access to quality, affordable health care."
The ACA provides different benefits and underwriting rules for small employers' health plans than for large employers' plans.
Letting small groups define themselves as being a part of a large group would keep small employers, and those employers' employees, from coming under the small-group rules, and that would go against the intentions of the ACA drafters, the coalition says.
