Health insurance subsidy under Obamacare
If you want to qualify for a government subsidy of your health insurance plan under Obamacare in 2014, you going to have to prove you need it. Or at the very least click the button that allows the government computers to prove it for you, by searching high and low for financial records and synthesizing them. Sound complicated? It is, and planners of the health insurance exchanges are spending a lot of time and energy figuring out how to make that happen.
The daunting complexity of doing it right was one of the few points raised by conservative economist Linda Gorman that health reform defender Zeke Emanuel didn bother moncler women refuting at a forum Thursday. Gorman and Emanuel engaged in a spirited exchange in The Denver Post auditorium, with organizing help from the University of Denver. Read our coverage of the debate main points here.
Gorman had more than one reason why the state health insurance exchanges are not a great idea. But she spotlighted a littlediscussed reform problem when she focused on verification. Means testing for the muchtouted subsidies is very hard to do right, or do quickly, she noted. Anyone familiar with the frequent failures of Colorado Medicaid and food stamps information systems can sympathize.
Consumers who don have insurance through their employer, or through Medicare or Medicaid, are meant to go onto the shopperfriendly exchange web site and choose a plan, while finding out how much their subsidy will pay for. The subsidies depend on income. How do you verify that quickly, for hundreds of thousands of Coloradans? Do you ask them to send in their income tax forms? Do you ask permission to find their IRS forms electronically? Is that even legal? How do you protect medical record privacy while also protecting taxpayers from waste or fraud?
Complex questions, the exchange planners admit. The shopping site Men Moncler presented to health insurance consumers needs to be simple and efficient to fulfill the promise of health reform. Designing the office UGG MEN to allow that to happen ugg women complicated, said Myung Oak Kim, spokeswoman for the Colorado exchange. The board and various subcontractors and consultants are working hard on it to make deadlines between now and the Jan. 1, 2014 launch for the public.
Exchange director Patty Fontneau listed some of those challenges in a blog post earlier this month. Check the exchange meeting schedule if you want to weigh in on how these issues get solved.