The problem means that potentially hundreds of thousands of people are receiving bigger subsidies than they deserve. They are part of a large group of Americans who listed incomes on their insurance applications that differ significantly — either too low or too high — from those on file with the Internal Revenue Service, documents show.
The government has identified these discrepancies but is stuck at the moment. Under federal rules, consumers are notified if there is a problem with their application and asked to upload or mail in pay stubs or other proof of their income. Only a fraction have done so, according to the documents. And, even when they have, the federal computer system at the heart of the insurance marketplace cannot match this proof with the application because that capability has yet to be built, according to the three individuals.
So piles of unprocessed “proof” documents are sitting in a federal contractor’s Kentucky office, and the government continues to pay insurance subsidies that may be too generous or too meager. Administration officials do not yet know what proportion are overpayments or underpayments. Under current rules, people receiving unwarranted subsidies will be required to return the excess next year.
The inability to make certain the government is paying correct subsidies is a legacy of computer troubles that crippled last fall’s launch of HealthCare.gov and the initial months of the first sign-up period for insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Federal officials and contractors raced to correct most of the technical problems hindering consumers’ ability to choose a health plan. But behind the scenes, important aspects of the Web site remain defective — or simply unfinished.”
“Because the computer capability does not yet exist, the work will start by hand, according to two people familiar with the plans. It will focus at first not on income questions, but on another roughly 1 million cases in which people enrolled — or tried to enroll — in health plans and ran into questions about their citizenship status. Throughout the sign-up period that ended earlier this spring , flaws in HealthCare.gov blocked many naturalized citizens or permanent legal residents, requiring them to submit immigration documents that are, like the income information, caught in a backlog.
The work of sorting out inaccurate incomes — and inaccurate subsidies, as a result — will likely begin sometime this summer, two individuals familiar with the plans said.”
“Of the various technical problems that remain with HealthCare.gov, the difficulty in straightening out discrepancies affects an especially large number of consumers. Of the roughly 8 million Americans who signed up for coverage this year under the health-care law, about 5.5 million are in the federal insurance exchange. And according to the internal documents, more than half of them — about 3 million people — have an application containing at least one kind of inconsistency. These inconsistencies have arisen as the information listed on their applications has been cross-checked, via a newly built federal data hub, with the Social Security Administration and other federal agencies, as well as incarceration, IRS and immigration records.
The income information is significant because the government for the first time is providing subsidies to help working-class and middle-class Americans buy private health plans. Under the federal rules, an application is “flagged” for special checking if the income someone says that they expect this year is at least 10 percent above or below the most recent income in their IRS tax returns.”
“The federal rules say that consumers have 90 days after applying to try to prove that their information is correct and, if an inconsistency is not resolved by then, whatever the federal records show is assumed to be correct. By now, about one-third of people with inconsistencies have passed their 90-day window. But because of the trouble verifying incomes, the government has not lowered or raised anyone’s subsidies.
Making sure that incomes — and subsidies — were accurate became a prominent issue during budget negotiations last year, as House and Senate Republican opponents of the health-care law warned of potential fraud. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius promised to thoroughly vet the salary information that people submitted as part of their health insurance applications.” - Federal health-care subsidies may be too high or too low for more than 1 million Americans, Washington Post, 05/16/2014
Upon further review, consider for a moment Healthcare.gov and the segue to the pricing page. The questions asked on the website, just prior to finding pricing is: “What is your household's expected income for 2014?” If one asks a question about "expected" income, one might find some interesting answers.
Link to the entire Washington Post article appears below:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/federal-health-care-subsidies-may-be-too-high-or-too-low-for-more-than-1-million-americans/2014/05/16/8f544992-dd14-11e3-8009-71de85b9c527_story.html
Update 05/21/2014: Yes, Some People Will Have to Pay Back Their Obamacare Subsidies, heritage.org
http://blog.heritage.org/2014/05/21/yes-people-will-pay-back-obamacare-subsidies/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_term=picture&utm_content=140524&utm_campaign=Saturday
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