Obamacare: hundreds of thousands of enrollees may have to pay back their subsidies

  You may remember that because the Obamacare website was not fully functional, despite claims to the contrary, the Federal government allowed the insurance companies to estimate how much in subsidies they were owed by the Federal government.

  Well now that could be coming back to bite hundreds of thousands of enrollees who may be receiving more government assistance than is due them according to this article.

The Obama administration is contacting hundreds of thousands of people with subsidized health insurance to resolve questions about their eligibility, as consumer advocates express concern that many will be required to repay some or all of the subsidies.

Of the eight million people who signed up for private health plans through insurance exchanges under the new health care law, two million reported personal information that differed from data in government records, according to federal officials and Serco, the company hired to resolve such inconsistencies.

The government is asking consumers for additional documents to verify their income, citizenship, immigration status and Social Securitynumbers, as well as any health coverage that they may have from employers. People who do not provide the information risk losing their subsidized coverage and may have to repay subsidies next April.

Since June 1, the government has notified hundreds of thousands of people that “the information in your application doesn’t match what we found in other records.” Accordingly, the notice says, “you need to follow up as soon as possible and provide more documents to make sure the marketplace has the correct information.”

“If you don’t send the needed documents,” it says, “you risk losing your marketplace coverage or help you may be receiving to pay for such coverage.”

  As you can see many people are being asked to send in more documentation, but in many cases these people have already sent in the additional documents and are being asked to do it again because the website still isn’t functioning as well as the Obama regime would have us believe. 

 “In some cases, consumers say they already sent the documents to the federal marketplace. They don’t understand why they are being asked to send them in again.”

Even though consumers have sent documents to Serco’s office in London, Ky., the government cannot always link the documents to applications for coverage filed months earlier. In addition, some consumers report persistent problems when they try to upload documents through HealthCare.gov.

  If they do not, or can not, provide the Federal government with the requested documents they will have to pay back the subsidies they have received. 

 A family of four with an annual income of $80,000 could be required to repay as much as $2,500.

  There are people, I am sure, who do not deserve these subsidies and tried to get away with something, but there are many others who, through no fault of their own, are now being put through additional scrutiny simply because the Federal government does not have its act together.

  The Federal government allowed the insurance companies to use the honor system and this what happens when the honor system is used with a less than honorable entity–such as the Federal government. 

  Perhaps I am being too harsh; I am sure that once all the kinks are worked out in this massive program it will run as smoothly and efficiently as the Veterans Affairs office…..