Brian Blase is a special assistant to the president at the National Economic Council focused on health care policy. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.

When President Trump took office, small businesses and hard-working, middle-class families were finding it increasingly difficult to afford health insurance. The Trump administration has already taken significant steps to help, and Thursday we took another one. A new Trump administration rule will provide an estimated 800,000 businesses a better way to offer coverage and millions of workers a better way to obtain coverage, through the expansion of Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs).

HRAs are employer-funded arrangements that workers use to pay for medical expenses. The Obama administration forbade workers in the individual insurance market to use HRAs to pay for coverage — significantly impeding employer flexibility and worker choice. Trump's new rule undoes this misguided restriction.

Starting on January 1, 2020, employers will be able to offer their workers HRAs to buy individual market coverage for themselves and their families. The administration's new rule addresses a major inequity by, in effect, providing the same tax advantage that traditional employer-sponsored group plans receive — exclusion of premiums from federal income or payroll taxes — to coverage that workers in the individual market purchase from an HRA.

to maintain their coverage when they switch jobs. The rule will significantly expand worker options since 80% of firms that provide insurance currently offer only one type of plan . Now, workers will be able to use tax-advantaged money from their employers to buy coverage of their choosing. This new flexibility will allow peopleto maintain their coverage when they switch jobs.

In particular, this new rule should help small business workers by making it possible for employers to fund coverage with less hassle and cost than maintaining a traditional group health plan. Between 2010 and 2018, the proportion of workers at firms with three to 49 workers covered by an employer plan fell by more than 25%. This rule should help reverse that decline. The rule also makes it easier for small businesses to compete with larger businesses for talent.

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