Feds give immigrants more time on health care
Consumers facing questions about their immigration status or income to qualify for health insurance plans have a few extra weeks to provide more information before losing coverage or subsidies, a Department of Health and Human Services official said Monday.
About 115,000 of 966,000 people who bought plans on HealthCare.gov and owed more information about their immigration status have unresolved issues, Andy Slavitt, principal deputy administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said. These people were given a deadline of Sept. 5 to submit information — they now have until Sept. 30 to provide proof of their citizenship, or they will lose coverage.
After that date, those people can reapply if they can prove citizenship even though the open enrollment period is closed.
The other 851,000 people either have had their cases resolved, or the cases are in the process of being resolved. Slavitt would not comment on how the resolved cases were decided.
"The good news is they have been able to resolve one way or another most of the problem applications where federal databases could not verify income or legal status," says health care consultant Kip Piper, a former state and federal Medicare official. "Bad news is the CMS data remain opaque, raising more questions than answers on how the effort to resolve cases will impact those individuals and families."
Still unknown: How many people have lost their subsidized coverage or will have to pay back money to the Internal Revenue Service.
CMS says it is waiting to hear back from 279,000 people who need to provide more documentation about their income so it's clear federal subsidies were warranted. These people must submit outstanding documents by Sept. 30. Those who shouldn't have gotten the subsidies will face tax liability, Slavitt says.
Ronnell Nolan, CEO of the trade group Health Agents of America, says she thinks it would be "political suicide" for the government to cancel the insurance of people with immigration issues. Besides, she says, this was supposed to be taken care of.
"During the initial enrollment process, citizenship was supposed to be verified during the identify proofing, and income was always supposed to be verified at tax time," Nolan says. "I continue to question the reason the marketplace has spent so much time and money doing something that was supposedly already done."
Slavitt said the Affordable Care Act is "working for millions of Americans," but he acknowledged, "As we look to the future, we recognize that we still have work to do."