The plan covering the team had not been meeting the standards of the Affordable Care Act.
The U.S. Olympians have now finally managed to obtain qualifying health insurance policies, following an agreement between the U.S. Olympic Committee and the government with regards to their coverage status.
Until this time, the health plans for the athletes and their dependents was not up to the ACA’s requirements.
There are approximately 850 athletes and about 225 dependents that are enrolled in the special health insurance policy plans through the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) and who have been using the benefits of that coverage in order to receive necessary healthcare. That said, when the coverage was designed, it was before the Affordable Care Act went into effect in 2010. That health care reform’s requirements meant that the plan wouldn’t qualify under the law. This made placed the athletes and their dependents in a position in which they could be subject to penalties for being uninsured, even though they had believed that they were adequately protected.
The insurance policy had previously allowed the athletes to be exempt from the penalties until 2014.
It was during that year that the majority of plans were first required to meet the health care reform’s set standards. It was also during that year that the majority of people who were underinsured or uninsured were required to purchase a new plan or to pay a penalty. At the end of last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) confirmed that the most recent changes implemented by the U.S. Olympic officials have now finally made certain that the health plan for the athletes and their dependents would qualify for this year.
At the time of the writing of this article, the CMS had not yet taken the opportunity to describe precisely what made it so that the athletes’ health plan did not comply with the health care law’s requirements.
Spokesperson, Aaron Albright, from the CMS released a statement about the health insurance policy issue and said that the “CMS successfully worked with this plan to bring the benefits in line with the law so that policyholders have access to coverage they can count on.”
