Some consumers are willing to pay the penalty for not having health insurance because it is cheaper than getting coverage, according to a new analysis.
The analysis from research firm Avalere Health details one reason why the administration has done so poorly in a special enrollment period for Obamacare. So far only 68,000 people have signed up for the period that ends April 30.
This is the period set aside for people who are getting hit by the law’s new tax on Americans who do not have health insurance packages. Affected taxpayers must still pay the 2014 penalty but could avoid the higher 2015 penalty by getting coverage by the deadline.
But it turns out many uninsured workers would rather pay the tax, because it will cost less than buying insurance.
The IRS shifted around substantial resources and manpower to implement the Affordable Care Act while its overall operations and taxpayer assistance suffered, according to a Republican staff report released by the House Ways and Means committee.
The findings, released Wednesday (April 22), follow a stressful tax season for the Treasury Department, as it handled nearly 1 million people who received incorrect 1095-A forms that used the wrong data to calculate health insurance exchange enrollees’ subsidies due to a technological code glitch. Taxpayers were told they owed or were owed the wrong amount for their tax return; the IRS said those affected did not have to refile if they had already done so.
“To date, the IRS has spent over $1.2 billion on implementation of the ACA,” the report says. “In fiscal year 2014, the IRS spent $386.6 million on the ACA, including $12.1 million from the taxpayer-services account and $185.7 million from its user-fee account.”
Oregon and Washington state strongly embraced Obamacare and opened their own health insurance exchanges. The states are similar, not just geographically but politically, economically and demographically. As the first enrollment season winds down, Washington has some of the best results in the country. Next door, Oregon’s exchange website is still broken.
SALEM, Ore. — Oregon had all the right ingredients for a sparkling Obamacare success story: a Democratic doctor as governor, an eager Legislature and a history of health care innovation.
It has been five years since the Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare, was signed into law. The disastrous rollout of the federal marketplace website, Healthcare.gov, is well-known. According to a Bloomberg Government analysis released in September 2014, the cost of Healthcare.gov was more than $2 billion, more than twice the Obama administration’s estimates. Appropriately, the federal marketplace has been a subject of numerous congressional hearings.
But state-run websites have also squandered hundreds of millions of federal tax dollars. While the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has been investigating some of the problems with state-run websites, much more can and should be done. Every House and Senate committee that oversees healthcare issues should carefully examine the roles played by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), state officials and contractors in the design and implementation of the websites.
Other states experienced their own particular brand of exchange fiascos. Add Hawaii, Minnesota, New Mexico, Idaho, and Vermont to the list.
The Obama administration says it does not have contingency plans should the Supreme Court decide the IRS acted illegally and the subsidies must stop. But Chairman Joe Pitts (R-PA) of the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee has information that suggests otherwise.
He said during a recent congressional hearing that he has learned of a 100-page document showing the Obama administration is preparing contingency plans should the Supreme Court invalidate the federal subsidies in King v Burwell.
HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell repeatedly denied the existence of such a document, and says she has no legal way around the Supreme Court. “That’s why you’re not hearing plans” from the administration, Burwell told Pitts. “Because we don’t have the authority.” States should not count on a simple – or legal – solution from the administration.
Instead, governors would be well advised to work with members of Congress who are developing contingency legislation that would allow people to continue to get subsidies legally so they don’t lose their coverage – clearing through the jungle of bureaucracy created by ObamaCare and restoring decisions over health coverage to citizens.
At some point between now and the beginning of July, 2015, the Supreme Court will decide King v. Burwell. If the Court sides with the plaintiffs and invalidates the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rule permitting federally facilitated exchanges to grant premium tax credits, the effects will be dramatic. Premium tax credits and cost-sharing reduction payments in the federally facilitated exchanges would probably cease at the end of July.
At that point, approximately 8 million Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM) enrollees currently receiving subsidies would have to decide whether to continue to pay the premiums themselves. Without the subsidies, their premiums would increase 122 to 774 percent depending on the state, with a national average increase of 255 percent. Millions of individuals would likely be unable to afford these premium increases and would cease paying their premiums. Their coverage would probably end 30 days thereafter.
Add Tennessee and Kansas to the list of states that have been warned by the Obama administration that failing to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act could jeopardize special funding to pay hospitals and doctors for treating the poor.
Although the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted 5 years ago, 2014 was the first year of implementation for most of the health law’s major provisions. In fact, it turned out to be a glitch machine. Defying the expectations of even the law’s most ardent critics, Obamacare’s rollout of the federal online health exchange was a disaster, combined with the cancellation of millions of private health insurance policies (if you “liked” your plan, too bad), a delay in reporting requirements of the employer mandate, and new administrative exemptions from the individual mandate penalty.
Nonetheless, the Obama administration’s allies insist that the law is “working” and that it will even become popular with the majority of Americans with the passage of time. The law’s congressional supporters, they hope, will reap political benefits rather than political retribution.
Is it better to follow the strict letter of the law or to adjust it where appropriate to produce a more equitable result? This is one of the oldest questions in legal thought, one that can be traced back at least to Aristotle — and on Wednesday the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in, 5-4, on the side of equity, with Justice Anthony Kennedy providing the deciding vote.
Ordinarily, a decision like this one, involving the interpretation of the Federal Tort Claims Act would be of interest only to practitioners who are specialists in statutory interpretation. But this isn’t an ordinary spring. In June, the Supreme Court will hand down its most important statutory interpretation case in a generation, essentially deciding whether the Affordable Care Act will survive or fall. The interpretation question before the court in that high profile case, King v. Burwell, bears a striking structural resemblance to the obscure one the court decided Wednesday. And, not for the first time, Kennedy is the justice whose intentions we can’t help trying to predict.
WASHINGTON (AP) – The IRS’ overloaded phone system hung up on more than 8 million taxpayers this filing season as the agency cut millions of dollars from taxpayer services to help pay to enforce President Barack Obama’s health law.
For those who weren’t disconnected, only 40 percent actually got through to a person. And many of those people had to wait on hold for more than 30 minutes, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Wednesday.
The number of disconnected callers spiked just as taxpayers were being hit with new requirements under the health law. Last year, the phone system dropped 360,000 calls, Koskinen said.
For the first time, taxpayers had to report whether they had health insurance last year on their tax returns. Those who received government subsidies had to respond whether they received the correct amount. People without insurance faced fines, collected by the IRS, if they did not qualify for an exemption.