Bid to Codify ICHRA Gains Momentum as Employers Seek Stability in Health Benefits Planning

Congress is moving to lock the Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement (ICHRA) into law, turning what began as a 2019 executive order into a permanent fixture of employer benefits policy. ICHRA has already survived a change in administrations, proving its durability in a system where most executive actions don’t. With the ACA marketplace growing from roughly 15 million to more than 23 million participants, the infrastructure is now large and stable enough for ICHRA to move from policy experiment to mainstream benefits strategy.

So what does this change actually mean for employers on the ground? We spoke with John Jenkins, the Head of Compliance at SureCo. With more than two decades across healthcare, insurance, and technology, Jenkins focuses on translating federal and state regulations into practical decisions for employers. His experience includes serving as Chief Compliance Officer for a corporate registered investment advisor with over $1 billion in pension assets under management, giving him a unique perspective on the intersection of risk, regulation, and market innovation.

"If ICHRA gets codified, it’s not subject to an executive order anymore. That removes the threat of the next election ending it, and it gives the product real legitimacy in the market," says Jenkins. For many employers and benefits consultants, codification is a green light, removing the political risk that kept many hesitant to commit to a temporary program.

• Election-proof planning: Codification removes the political uncertainty that has kept many large consulting firms on the sidelines. For benefits advisors guiding enterprise decisions, long-term planning depends on confidence that the rules will hold. "No one wants to build a multi-year benefits strategy around an executive order that could disappear after the next election," notes Jenkins.

• Hypothesis confirmed: Adoption has already been growing as employers test the model, but permanence changes the posture. "Once it becomes law, this stops being an experiment and starts being infrastructure." With that uncertainty gone, the expectation is clear. "This is the moment where cautious interest turns into scaled adoption."

• Fine, not fine: For employers who adopt the ICHRA model, their role changes. Instead of choosing plans, their focus shifts to managing the money and the rules. This includes administering pre-tax contributions through Section 125 "cafeteria" plans and handling COBRA. But the most pressing compliance risk they now face is a financial one: the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate. "The ACA employer mandate is probably the biggest compliance risk we help companies with. The IRS really does send penalty letters, and they typically come with a steep fee," notes Jenkins. To avoid penalties, companies must ensure their ICHRA contributions are structured to meet the ACA's specific affordability requirements.

The push to codify ICHRA is also reshaping the political framing around employer-sponsored healthcare. Instead of reopening a decade-long fight over repealing the Affordable Care Act, the focus has shifted toward refining and building on the system that already exists. Permanence changes the conversation from ideological to practical, creating space to rethink how benefits are funded, delivered, and experienced by employees without reopening old partisan battles.

• Advantages at scale: From Jenkins’ perspective, that stability is what makes the next wave of innovation possible. "When the rules stop changing, you can finally design benefits for where the market is going, not where it was ten years ago." He points to Health Savings Accounts as a natural extension of an ICHRA-based model, especially when combined with individual coverage. "HSAs work because they reward people for being thoughtful consumers, and when you layer that on top of ICHRA, you get triple tax advantages that simply did not exist before at scale." In his view, codification gives employers the confidence to invest in these structures rather than treating them as optional add-ons.

• Choices, choices: That same logic carries through to how employees actually experience choice. Jenkins often describes the individual marketplace as overwhelming, not empowering, when it is left unmanaged. "If you drop someone into a marketplace with a hundred plans and no guidance, that is not consumer choice, that is decision fatigue." Technology, he argues, is what turns abundance into usability. "Platforms can narrow options, surface the plans that actually fit someone’s needs, and even make pre-tax spending feel intuitive rather than bureaucratic." That includes expanding what qualified health dollars can be used for. "When you remove the friction, things like fitness equipment or preventive care stop feeling like perks and start functioning as part of the benefits ecosystem."

What happens next is less about politics than execution. Codifying ICHRA does not reinvent employer-sponsored benefits, but it removes the instability that has kept meaningful change just out of reach. With permanence, employers can plan beyond election cycles, brokers can recommend with confidence, and platforms can invest in tools that make choice usable rather than overwhelming. The policy scaffolding is already in place, the marketplace has reached critical mass, and the incentives are aligned in a way they have not been before. "Once the law is settled, the market is going to take off like a rocket ship," Jenkins concludes.