Income and Insurance Verification - Delayed Till 2015.

[Yagents]

The smoker rate will be different in 2014 due to a technical glitch:

A break for smokers? Glitch may limit penalties

A June 28 Health and Human Services Department document couched the smokers' glitch in technical language:
"Because of a system limitation ... the system currently cannot process a premium for a 65-year-old smoker that is ... more than three times the premium of a 21-year-old smoker," the industry guidance said.
If an insurer tries to charge more, "the submission of the (insurer) will be rejected by the system," it added.

 

[TXINSURANCE]

I know in Colorado the smoking rate up only applies to tobacco. Lol

 

[RayNY]

Tobacco is the only smoking that matters... Meth and crack smokers can't afford any premium because they spend it all on meth/crack, and marijuana has no proven medical side effects.

Data>Propoganda

 

[stuy119]

Great blog on this from Megan McCardle today:

Obamacare Gets Easier to Implement All the Time . . . As Long as You Don’t Care About Losing Major Functions « Megan McArdle

In it, she mentions a lot of what we've discussed, but also poses the hypothesis that the government knew a lot of this would have to be delayed - because they refused the attempt to implement, knowing the provisions were unpopular.

 

[AllenChicago]

CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner testified (b4 Congress) today that the central Data Hub that connects 7 federal agencies is now complete and intra-agency testing will begin shortly.

According to the press releases, Income verification will not be delayed until 2015 as was reported last week?

Story1: Tavenner Says Data Hub for Insurance Exchanges Is Complete - iHealthBeat

Story2: Obamacare Privacy Fears Loom as Computer Links Agencies - Bloomberg

Interestingly, the $267 million Data Hub was built by a unit of United Healthcare, yet United Healthcare is only planning to participate in 10 of the 51 state exchanges. (D.C. is 51)

-ac

 

[Yagents]

Seems they can leverage the private sector when it's convenient. I wonder why they didn't do the same thing with exchange implementation. Stimulus?

Equifax hired to verify incomes of health-exchange applicants : Business

Equifax Workforce Solutions has been tapped to verify incomes of people who apply for federal subsidies to buy health insurance, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
The St. Louis-based credit reporting agency, a unit of Equifax Inc., should be able to provide information that's more current than what's available on federal income tax reports, the newspaper said.

 

[AllenChicago]

So Equifax becomes another potential problem and bottleneck in the qualification-application process.

How does Equifax know how much money an applicant earned if that applicant didn't conduct any meaningful financial transactions in 2013? Do employers send W-2's, 1099's, etc. to Equifax too?

How will the IRS know that it needs to claw-back any overage of subsidy payments if the agency is left out of the loop?

The article also says that Equifax will verify employment, which I'm really having a hard time believing.

It's looking less and less like the application process will start and conclude in under 45 minutes, like CMS is predicting.
-ac

 

[somarco]

It's looking less and less like the application process will start and conclude in under 45 minutes, like CMS is predicting.

Naysayer!

You must be one of those Tea Party racist freaks.

 

[xrac]

It's just such a mess . . . .

I second that motion!