14. Department of Health and Human Services · Notable
Reinstate the Trump ACA abortion separate payment regulation
Printed page 473 14. Department of Health and Human Services
“HHS should reinstate a Trump Administration regulation and enforce what the plain text of Section 1303 requires. That regulation should be further improved by requiring CMS to ensure that consumers pay truly separate charges for abortion coverage.”
What has happened
- Not started
The 2019 separate-billing regulation under ACA section 1303 has not been reinstated. CMS's two major exchange rules of the window were fetched and searched in full: the Marketplace Integrity and Affordability final rule (2025-06-25) contains no occurrence of the word "abortion" at all, and the 2027 Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters (2026-05-20) mentions section 1303 only in the essential health benefits context, not the separate payment requirement. Federal Register full-text search for "separate billing" since 2025-01-20 returns a single unrelated Medicare Advantage rule. The Biden 2021 rescission stands. One further place the next pass might look is now closed off: HHS-OIG's published-report index, searched with a working server-side filter and a verified control on 2026-09-03, contains exactly one abortion-related document in its entire history — a 2007 New York Medicaid laboratory-claims audit — and nothing in the window touches ACA abortion separate payments. OIG is the wrong instrument for this ask in any case, since it is a CMS rulemaking, so that is context rather than evidence. Negative search recorded in `docs/research/ch-14.md`.
No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Sources searched: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-06-25/html/2025-11606.htm (“abortion” → 0 occurrences, “sex-trait” → 255) and https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-05-20/html/2026-10050.htm (“abortion” → 0).
- Searched: Federal Register “separate billing” → 1; “elective abortion” → 6; “abortion services” → 7. None is a section 1303 rulemaking, and the 2026 Unified Agenda lists no CMS or CCIIO rulemaking on the subject.
- Action
- reinstate
- Object
- ACA Section 1303 abortion separate payment regulation
- ID
- 1303