Both small employers (2-50) and midsize employers (50-100) that like their coverage might be able to keep it in place until their anniversary date following Oct. 1, 2016.

Gary Cohen, the outgoing director of the Center for Consumer Information & Insurance Oversight, raises the possibility in a memo (memos are now considered law) in an "insurance standards bulletin series." 

Early Wednesday, news organizations began reporting rumors that CCIIO would be letting individuals keep major medical policies that fail to comply with CA insurance standards in force for two more years.

The Obama administration later confirmed it by posting the Cohen memo. 

In the early reports, the news organizations noted consumers would be able to keep coverage only if the state regulators and carriers involved agreed. 

In the official memo, Cohen says the new pre-ACA coverage extension will let consumers renew policies through policy years beginning on or after Oct. 1, 2016, so if the anniversary date is Sept. the plan could be maintained until September, 2017. 

The carriers are just now completing the massive anniversary date change to Dec. 1, 2013, to avoid the original Jan. 1, 2014, ACA compliance date for small group and individual plans.  Now it looks like the carriers will be changing the anniversary dates to September to avoid the ACA benefit rules and rating system until October, 2017. 

This constant change of the law is creating hardship and disruption for insurance companies, employers and employees who are constantly changing anniversary dates and open enrollment dates to avoid the ACA, and what happens at the end of three years when the ACA pooled rates are even higher due to adverse selection caused by the delays. 

States can make that extension available in the individual market, the small group market, or both. 

ACA now defines a small employer as an employer with 50 or fewer full-time equivalent employees. In 2016, ACA will also let employers with 51 to 100 FTEs buy small-group coverage through the Small Business Health Options Program exchanges. 

A state can offer the two-year pre-ACA coverage extension to the midsize employers (50-100) that will move from the large employer category to the small employer category in 2016, Cohen says. 

In December, CMS said individuals whose pre-ACA policies were canceled could qualify for a hardship exemption that would let them buy "catastrophic coverage" with a high deductible but a low premium. 

In the new memo, Cohen says CMS will make access to the hardship exemption available to the stranded policyholders until Oct. 1, 2016. We now have a new class of individual policyholders, "stranded".