The Affordable Care Act created a new Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) that is to be partially funded through fees paid by health plans and health insurance issuers.  Plan sponsors of self-insured health plans and health insurance issuers must pay the PCORI fee for seven years, starting with the plan year ending between October 1, 2012, and September 30, 2013.  The PCORI fee starts at $1 per covered life for the first year and increases to $2 per covered life for the second year.  The fee may be indexed to reflect increases in health care costs for the third through seventh years.

The PCORI fee is reported and paid on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form 720.  The IRS has just released a revised version of Form 720 that includes two new lines for the PCORI fee (one line for plan sponsors of self-insured plans and one line for health insurance issuers).  The PCORI fee is “IRS No. 133”; it is covered on pages 1 and 8–9 of the instructions.  The first PCORI fee payment is due on July 31, 2013.