Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 (the CAA) requires group health plans and health insurance carriers to attest on an annual basis that they are in compliance with the CAA’s gag clause prohibition. While the prohibition of gag clauses was effective December 27, 2020, the first annual attestation is due December 31, 2023. Group health plan sponsors should begin taking steps now to prepare.

The past decade has seen an explosion in consumer products and services going digital—especially during the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. You can order your groceries, have your clothes dry-cleaned and your car detailed without ever leaving your home. While companies like Teledoc have created a realm of virtual health care, many medical procedures and other healthcare services still demand physical space outside of a patient’s home. Consumers are increasingly seeking convenience in their daily tasks and errands, and medical appointments are no exception. Enter medtail.

The American Rescue Plan Act (“the Act”) signed in March 2021 provides for a 100% COBRA premium subsidy for certain individuals who are eligible for and enroll in COBRA coverage between April 1, 2021 and September 30, 2021. Employers sponsoring health plans should take action quickly to ensure that the subsidy is properly administered and consider its effects on any planned layoffs or other severance events.

As expanded upon here in our firm’s Three Key Things in Health Care update, health care providers should not let a recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal dissuade them from aggressively pursuing recovery for business interruption losses related to COVID. In short, the authors of that editorial ignore the language and structure of many insurance policies, which either provide for coverage of COVID-related losses by their express terms or expressly contemplate state-mandated coverage expansions favoring the insured as binding on the insurer ...