Strengthening Marketplace Network Rules for Essential Community Providers Is a Matter of Health Equity

Under the Affordable Care Act, provider networks of marketplace health insurance plans must include essential community providers — those caring for predominately low-income and medically underserved patients. In a blog for Commonwealth Fund the authors explain that the administration’s proposed rules to strengthen such requirements for the 2024 plan year would still permit plans to exclude many essential providers in their service. Allowing plans to limit their participation could increase the financial struggles of many safety-net providers, which already face losses as a result of the end of the pandemic-era Medicaid continuous enrollment policy and COVID-related supplemental grants. This blog for the was authored by Sara Rosenbaum, Caitlin Murphy and Rebecca Morris.