[FN-03] Policy Watch

The live-legislation and live-litigation register — what is unsettled, who decides it, and which articles change when it lands

Pillar: Foundations · Applies to: Anyone acting on a rule this wiki describes as “as of” a date Type: Reference Last verified: August 2026 · Refresh cadence: Event-driven — within a week of major legislation, a ruling, or a final rule; full sweep every November alongside FN-02 Related: FN-02 Key Numbers · HC-01 ACA Bridge · HC-03 Medicaid Floor · HC-06 IRMAA · SS-01 Claiming Age Math · ER-02 Roth Ladder · TX-02 Roth Conversion Strategy

Verification legend: ✅ = confirmed against the primary source (statute, docket, Federal Register, agency release) during the August 2026 sweep · ◻️ = high confidence, confirm before acting

Not advice. This page exists because parts of the retirement rulebook are actively in motion. Every entry is a snapshot with a date on it, and several will be wrong by the time you read them — that is the nature of the page, not a defect in it. Nothing here is settled law until the “Status” column says so. Verify anything load-bearing against the primary source cited in its section before acting.

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How to read this page

Invariant 4 of this wiki’s spec says that anything litigation- or Congress-dependent is stated in its home article as “as of [month year]” with a pointer here. This is where those pointers land. The articles carry the mechanics; this page carries the motion.

Status	Meaning
Live	In force today. Plan on it.
Pending	Introduced, passed one chamber, or under negotiation. Plan as if it will not happen; treat enactment as upside.
Contested	In force but under legal challenge, or vacated and under appeal. The answer can flip on a court’s calendar.
Scheduled	Enacted, with a future effective date. Plan for it.
Resolved	Settled since the last sweep. Kept for one cycle so readers who remember the fight know how it ended.

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1. Status board (August 2026)

#	Item	Status	Next decision point	Articles affected
1	Enhanced ACA premium tax credits — restoration	Pending	Senate action on the CARE Act; none scheduled	HC-01, HC-03, ER-02
2	CMS Marketplace Integrity rule — City of Columbus v. Kennedy	Contested	4th Cir. briefing closes Sept 1, 2026	HC-01
3	Medicaid community-engagement (“work”) requirement	Scheduled + Contested	State implementation Jan 1, 2027; 25-state suit pending	HC-03
4	OBBBA verification and cost-sharing phase-ins	Scheduled	Rolling through 2028	HC-01, HC-03
5	Social Security trust-fund depletion	Pending (no bill moving)	2027 Trustees Report, ~June 2027	SS-01, SS-03
6	IRMAA top-bracket indexing freeze	Scheduled to lapse	Indexing resumes 2028	HC-06, FN-02
7	OBBBA senior deduction sunset	Scheduled	Expires after tax year 2028	TX-06, TX-02, FN-02
8	2027 ACA applicable percentages	Live (published)	Applies to 2027 plan year	HC-01, FN-02
9	Short-term plan (STLDI) duration rule — reopened	Contested	New tri-agency rulemaking; no proposed rule as of August 2026	HC-05
10	NY Essential Plan §1332 waiver	Resolved	Terminated July 1, 2026	HC-03
11	WEP/GPO repeal	Resolved	Enacted Jan 2025	SS-01, SS-02

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2. Enhanced premium tax credits — the biggest open number in the wiki

Status: Pending. Nothing has been enacted. The 400% FPL cliff is live law for the 2026 plan year. ✅

The American Rescue Plan (2021) and Inflation Reduction Act (2022) enhancements expired December 31, 2025, restoring the 400% FPL eligibility cliff and raising required contributions at every income band. What has happened since:

Date	Event	Outcome
Dec 2025	Senate votes on competing extensions, incl. the Lower Health Care Costs Act (S. 3385)	Failed to reach 60 votes ✅
Jan 8, 2026	H.R. 1834, a three-year extension, passes the House 230–196 (17 Republicans in favor)	Advanced to the Senate ✅
Ongoing	Bipartisan Senate group drafting the Consumer Affordability and Responsibility Enhancement (CARE) Act — roughly a two-year extension with income caps, minimum premium payments, and added program-integrity provisions	Not introduced for a floor vote as of August 2026 ✅

What to do with this. Plan under current law: the cliff exists, repayment caps are gone, and the applicable percentages run 2.10%–9.96% for 2026 (HC-01 §2). If a compromise passes, the likely shape — a shorter extension with an income cap and a minimum premium — means a household well above 400% FPL should not assume restoration returns them to the 2021–2025 world. An income-capped extension can leave the cliff in place at a higher line rather than removing it.

Primary sources: H.R. 1834 and S. 3385 (119th Congress) on congress.gov; CRS R48290, “Enhanced Premium Tax Credit and 2026 Exchange Premiums.”

3. City of Columbus v. Kennedy — enrollment rules vacated, on appeal

Status: Contested. This one has already changed a deadline this wiki previously told readers to assume. ✅

CMS’s 2025 Marketplace Integrity and Affordability final rule tightened marketplace enrollment in several ways at once. On June 12, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland vacated a set of its provisions: ✅

• the shortened open enrollment period (the rule’s move to Nov 1 – Dec 15 on HealthCare.gov),
• the failure-to-reconcile policy at 45 C.F.R. §155.305(f)(4), including the new (f)(4)(iii),
• actuarial value standard changes, and
• elimination of the automatic 60-day extension to resolve income data-matching issues.

Then, on July 16, 2026, the same court stayed certain provisions of the 2027 Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters, and the government noticed an appeal to the Fourth Circuit (No. 26-1938). ✅

Where the appeal stands: government’s opening brief filed July 29, 2026; scheduling order August 4, 2026; plaintiffs’ response brief due September 1, 2026. ✅ A ruling could land before, during, or after the 2027 open enrollment window.

Planning consequence — this is the actionable part. With the shortened-OE provision vacated, HealthCare.gov’s 2027 open enrollment is currently expected to run November 1, 2026 – January 15, 2027, not closing December 15. ◻️ But an appellate reversal could restore the short window on short notice, and December 15 remains the deadline for January 1 coverage in every state regardless — enrolling December 16–January 15 starts coverage February 1. ✅

So the operating rule is unchanged in practice even though the law changed: finish enrollment by December 15. You gain a January backstop that may or may not survive the Fourth Circuit; you do not gain a January 1 coverage date. State-based exchanges set their own windows and are not bound by the federal calendar either way (HC-01 §7).

Primary sources: CMS, “Impacts of City of Columbus v. Kennedy on Open Enrollment 2026” and the CMS legal statement on failure-to-reconcile for PY2026–27; Georgetown Health Care Litigation Tracker docket for Columbus I; 4th Cir. No. 26-1938.

4. Medicaid community-engagement requirement — scheduled, and being sued over

Status: Scheduled for January 1, 2027, and Contested. ✅

OBBBA (P.L. 119-21) requires expansion adults aged 19–64 to document 80 hours/month of work, education, job training, or community service as a condition of Medicaid eligibility. CMS issued the implementing interim final rule (CMS-2454-IFC) on June 1, 2026, published in the Federal Register June 3, 2026. ✅

Three things a reader planning a Medicaid bridge needs, none of which were knowable when HC-03 was written:

1. States must implement no later than January 1, 2027 — but a state may apply for a temporary good-faith-effort exemption that delays implementation to no later than December 31, 2028. ✅ Whether your state seeks one is now a material planning variable, not a footnote.
2. On June 30, 2026, 25 states and the District of Columbia sued CMS in federal district court seeking to block provisions of the interim final rule, including its treatment of “medically frail” individuals. ✅ The exemption categories are therefore themselves unsettled.
3. Statutory exemptions include pregnant and postpartum individuals, Tribal members, veterans with total disability ratings, the medically frail, certain caregivers, and people already meeting SNAP or TANF work requirements. ✅

The FIRE-specific question HC-03 §6 raises remains open and is the single most consequential unresolved item on this page for early retirees: a voluntarily unemployed early retiree may satisfy no work test and fit no listed exemption. Nothing since June 2026 has resolved it. Treat Medicaid as a coverage source you actively manage, and watch your own state’s implementation posture and exemption request.

Primary sources: CMS-2454-IFC fact sheet and Federal Register 2026-11094 (June 3, 2026); Medicaid.gov “Community Engagement”; Georgetown CCF coverage of the 25-state challenge.

5. Remaining OBBBA phase-ins

Status: Scheduled. These are enacted law with future effective dates — plan for them, don’t hedge them.

Provision	Lands	Effect
Pre-enrollment eligibility/income verification	Phasing through 2028	Ends passive auto-renewal; documentation burden rises (HC-01 §7)
Medicaid cost-sharing up to $35/service for expansion adults >100% FPL	Later this decade ◻️	Raises the true cost of a Medicaid bridge year (HC-03 §5)
Twice-yearly Medicaid redeterminations	With the work rule ◻️	More churn risk
Senior deduction ($6,000/person 65+)	Expires after tax year 2028	A 65+ MFJ couple’s combined deduction drops by $12,000 in 2029 — conversion and gain-harvest capacity contracts (TX-02, FN-02)
APTC repayment caps eliminated	Already live, 2026 forward	Unlimited clawback (HC-01 §6)

The senior-deduction sunset deserves more attention than it gets. It is the only scheduled contraction of a deduction in this wiki’s planning horizon, and it lands mid-way through a typical conversion program. A household filling brackets against a $47,500 combined deduction in 2028 is filling against roughly $35,500 in 2029, indexing aside. Build the cliff into multi-year conversion plans now.

6. Social Security solvency

Status: Pending — no bill is moving. The 2026 Trustees Report (June 2026) projects: ✅

Fund	Depletion	Payable from ongoing revenue
OASI alone	Q4 2032 (one quarter earlier than the 2025 report)	78%
OASI + DI combined (requires legislation to combine)	2034	83%

No reform legislation has advanced. The planning posture set out in SS-01 §7 stands: baseline on scheduled benefits, sensitivity-test at ~78% for years past the early 2030s, and note that a proportional cut is claiming-age-neutral — filing early hedges nothing.

Watch item for the 2027 report (~June 2027): whether the OASI date moves again. Two consecutive quarters of slippage would be a genuine signal; one is noise.

Primary source: 2026 OASDI Trustees Report, Section II.A highlights; SSA press release June 9, 2026.

7. Medicare and tax items on a known clock

• IRMAA top-bracket freeze lapses in 2028. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 barred inflation indexing of the $500,000/$750,000 tier until 2028; the lower four index annually. Until then, bracket creep pushes more households into the top tier every year (HC-06 §2). ✅
• 2027 Medicare premiums, deductibles, and IRMAA thresholds are announced by CMS around November 2026. Anyone sizing a 2026 conversion against a 2028 premium year is planning against unpublished lines — use current thresholds minus buffer and treat indexing as upside (HC-06 §6). ✅
• 2027 ACA applicable percentages are already published (Rev. Proc. 2026-26): 2.15% → 10.22%, a further increase over 2026’s 2.10% → 9.96%. ◻️ The required contribution at every income band rises again (FN-02).
• WEP and GPO repeal is resolved — the Social Security Fairness Act (signed January 5, 2025) eliminated both, retroactive to benefits payable from January 2024. Public-sector retirees whose claiming math predates it are working from stale numbers (SS-01 §8). ✅

8. Short-term plan duration — a rule in force that is not being enforced

The 2024 tri-agency rule caps short-term, limited-duration insurance sold on or after 1 September 2024 at a three-month initial term and four months including renewals ✅. On 7 August 2025 the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Treasury announced they would begin new rulemaking on the definition and, pending that, would not prioritise enforcement against issuers failing to meet it ✅.

Why it sits on this board rather than in HC-05 alone: the rule is simultaneously in force and unenforced, which is a state no reader should have to infer. Nothing has been proposed as of August 2026, so the four-month cap remains the law to plan against — and the products a reader is actually offered may not respect it.

What changes if a new rule lands: longer durations would make short-term plans a plausible bridge for a healthy early retiree between a retirement date and Medicare, which today they cannot be. The exclusions would not change — pre-existing conditions, essential health benefits, and annual caps are the product’s economics, not its duration (HC-05 §4). State law is the binding constraint in much of the country regardless: five states prohibit the sale outright ✅.

9. New York Essential Plan — resolved, kept for one cycle

NY’s §1332 waiver extending Essential Plan eligibility to 250% FPL terminated July 1, 2026. The Essential Plan reverted to Basic Health Program authority covering up to 200% FPL, and the 200–250% FPL population moved to marketplace QHPs, becoming newly PTC-eligible. ✅ Fully reflected in HC-03 §2; this entry drops at the next sweep.

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Change log

Date	Change
Aug 2026	Page created. Ten items registered; all statuses verified against primary sources. Two findings required patches to already-published articles: the Columbus vacatur of the shortened open enrollment period (HC-01) and the 25-state challenge plus good-faith-effort delay to 2028 in the Medicaid work rule (HC-03).
Next sweep	On any of: Senate floor action on the CARE Act · a Fourth Circuit ruling in Columbus (briefing closes Sept 1, 2026) · a district-court ruling in the 25-state Medicaid suit · CMS’s November 2026 release of 2027 Medicare figures.