NEW YORK (AP) — The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services will temporarily bring all furloughed employees back to work to manage open enrollment in health insurance beginning Monday, according to an agency spokesman.
The call to duty amid the more than three-week government shutdown was necessary to “best serve the American people during the open enrollment season for Medicare and Marketplace,” the spokesman said Thursday.
Funding comes from user fees derived from sharing data with researchers, the agency said.
The decision to recall employees shows how much of an impact the government shutdown and workforce cuts have had on the federal government’s work during a crucial season as millions of Americans choose their health insurance plans for next year. According to its website, CMS provides health insurance to more than 160 million people.
This also comes at a time of uncertainty for Affordable Care Act participants, as Congress is unsure how to deal with expiring subsidies that have made health insurance more affordable for millions of people since 2021. Democratic lawmakers are demanding a deal to extend COVID-era subsidies before agreeing on government funding, while Republican lawmakers want to reopen the government before negotiating the issue.
As the standoff and resulting government shutdown continue, the cost of health insurance for many of the 24 million ACA participants next year is still unknown, even as enrollment begins in a week.
Although CMS has not specified how long employees will return, the Medicare open enrollment period runs between October 15th and December 7th, while the Affordable Care Act Marketplace open enrollment period runs between November 1st and January 15th.
While the agency did not answer questions about how many employees would return to work, about 3,300 of CMS’s employees, or just over half, were expected to remain employed during the shutdown, according to the agency’s contingency plans. That would mean about 3,000 furloughed workers would be called back to work on Monday.
While CMS saw no layoffs during the current shutdown, its parent agency – the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – was hit hardest by the government-wide workforce reductions. Nearly 1,000 HHS employees were suddenly laid off earlier this month, although a judge has temporarily suspended the effective date of those layoffs.
