On the heels of delaying portions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) until 2015, the Obama Administration has announced it will also scale back the ACA requirements that new insurance marketplaces verify consumers’ income and health insurance status.
The federal government will instead look at consumers’ self-reported information in order to determine their eligibility for provisions like tax subsidies until 2015, when it hopes to have more able verification systems in place, according to a
report by The Washington Post.
The ACA includes tax subsidies to purchase health insurance for people who earn less than 400 percent of the poverty line or about $45,000 for an individual, the report says. Those who earn less than 133 percent of the poverty line, or about $15,000, will qualify for Medicaid coverage in Washington D.C. and 23 other states that decided to expand the program.
Also, consumers who receive health insurance from their company for less than 9.5% of their income do not qualify for tax credits under the ACA, the report says.
The federal government decided Friday it will not require D.C. and 16 states running their own insurance marketplaces to verify a consumer’s statement that they do not receive health insurance from their employer, the report says. The federal government will conduct an audit for the states where it’s managing the new insurance Web portal.
Further, initial regulations proposed to audit each consumer who reported an income significantly lower than what federal records showed, but the recently released
rule says the government will only audit a statistically significant sample of such cases, the report says. Consumers not a part of such cases can submit personal attestations for annual household income.
Still, lying on the exchange form can bring fines up to $25,000, as well as require a person to pay back the extra subsidies.