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More Than 100,000 Enrollees Are Likely to Lose Obamacare Coverage
Missing verification forms regarding immigration status could cause them to lose their insurance at the end of September.
More than 100,000 Obamacare enrollees are set to lose their new insurance coverage at the end of the month because they have not verified their legal status in the United States.
There are currently about 115,000 individuals who signed up on the federal marketplace but have not provided paperwork to resolve discrepancies between the citizenship or immigration status indicated on their insurance application and what the federal government has on record, the Obama administration said Monday.
Individuals must be legal residents of the U.S. in order to purchase insurance coverage through the health law's new exchanges.
The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services had approximately 966,000 people with these discrepancies as of May. About one-third remained in August, and those 310,000 received notices from CMS requesting the additional paperwork.
While the majority have been resolved or are in the process of being resolved, 115,000 have not. If those enrollees do not provide documentation by Sept. 30, their coverage will be terminated.
"[For the 115,000 individuals], we're asking them—if they have not sent us their documentation—we're asking them to do so, and reminding them [they will be eligible for] a special enrollment period to be reinstated," CMS Principal Deputy Administrator Andy Slavitt said on a press call. "If they are willing to pay premiums and are eligible, they will continue to get coverage."
Slavitt said he could not provide a breakdown of how many of the resolved cases were found to be ineligible for coverage.
An additional 279,000 households—representing around 363,000 individuals—have income discrepancies on their applications that have not yet been resolved, according to CMS. Notices are going out Monday to implore them to send income verification forms by Sept. 30 as well.
However, the failure to do so will result in adjustments to financial assistance for these individuals, not in loss of coverage. Instead, their premiums will be adjusted beginning Jan. 1 to reflect the income level on record with the government, and they will be required to reconcile their previous payments in their tax forms this year, Slavitt explained.
"We still have work to do here," he said. "There are people we have reached out to and haven't heard from that we still have work left to do to help them."
This article appears in the September 16, 2014 edition of NJ Daily.
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