CMS seeks comment on Exchange improper-payment and enrollee-experience data collections

CMS is giving the public until August 13, 2026, to comment on two Affordable Care Act marketplace information collections. One would create a new State Exchange Improper Payment Measurement collection; the other would renew and revise the Consumer Experience Survey Data Collection for the QHP Enrollee Experience Survey for 2027 through 2029. The notice is procedural, but the collections help shape the data CMS uses for marketplace oversight, plan comparison, and consumer-experience reporting.

What It Is

The notice is a Paperwork Reduction Act submission to the Office of Management and Budget, published July 14, 2026, at 91 FR 43093-43095. PRA notices are where agencies ask whether the information they want to collect is necessary, useful, clear, and not more burdensome than it needs to be. In this case, CMS is seeking review of two collections tied to ACA marketplace operations: State Exchange Improper Payment Measurement, listed as CMS-10942 with a new OMB control number request, and Consumer Experience Survey Data Collection, CMS-10488, covering the QHP Enrollee Experience Survey.

What’s Changing

For the new improper-payment collection, HHS proposes requiring state Exchanges to submit samples of tax-household information from Qualified Health Plans with associated advance premium tax credit payments, so HHS can review improper payments and report an aggregate estimate in the HHS Agency Financial Report. CMS estimates 20 respondents and 800 total annual burden hours. For the QHP Enrollee Experience Survey, CMS is seeking renewal for 2027-2029 and proposes revisions including removing four tobacco-use questions, replacing separate race and ethnicity questions with one item aligned to OMB's revised Statistical Policy Directive No. 15, refining telehealth questions to align with CAHPS 5.1, adding gate questions, allowing issuer-name customization, permitting oversampling, adding a third email reminder, extending telephone dialing, and revising survey materials for plain language.

Why It Matters

Marketplace data policy often moves through procedural notices, but the practical stakes are real. The improper-payment proposal would shape what state Exchanges have to assemble and send to HHS for oversight of advance premium tax credit payments. The survey revisions would affect the consumer-experience data CMS uses to support plan comparison, issuer performance work, and regulatory or accreditation uses identified in the notice.

For patients, the useful question is whether the survey stays readable enough to answer and reliable enough to mean something. For plans and Exchanges, the question is whether CMS has drawn the burden line in the right place. The comment window is open now, which means the quiet paperwork phase is also the actionable one. Read the notice in the Federal Register (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/07/14/2026-14087/agency-information-collection-activities-submission-for-omb-review-comment-request)