Through Item 479 F of the 2024 Appropriation Act (*1), the General Assembly directed the Bureau of Insurance (Bureau) to request guidance from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on the following two areas of inquiry:

(i) How nutritional counseling is defined as a preventive care benefit under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and review whether the current definition of nutritional counseling in Virginia's Essential Health Benefit benchmark plan meets federal guidelines; and

(ii) Whether removing prior authorization for eating disorder services would be considered an expansion of services that would warrant a state-funded cost defrayal under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The Bureau is to report the findings to the Joint Commission on Health Care and the Health Insurance Reform Commission by September 1, 2024.
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(*1) See 2024 Va. Acts Spec. Sess I ch. 2.