To address the narrowing of provider networks,  the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services wants to mandate minimum network standards for health plans  to be sold on the federal insurance marketplace in 2017.

The proposed rule  would ask states to establish a quantitative measure to ensure that policyholders under the Affordable Care Act have sufficient access to healthcare providers. For states  that don’t establish a standard,  the CMS would mandate a default setting  to  measure network adequacy by maximum travel times or distances to providers.