Covered California has released a new income attestation form that looks like the one it replaced. While the fields and text have not changed, it is designed with Artificial Intelligence (AI) in mind. Covered California states that all attestations submitted for income verification should use the new form to avoid any delays in processing.
Artificial Intelligence and the Income Attestation Form
Perhaps not prominent enough, the new income attestation form requests that the first, middle, and last name be printed in capital letters. This is to help AI recognize the names for proper verification. Lower case letters, depending on how they are written, can be hard to interpret. I have uploaded an income attestation with lower case letters and AI flagged it as not being able to discern the first name field.
Print or Type with CAPITAL LETTERS ONLY
Covered California is using AI to expedite the verification process. Common documents are scanned by AI, determined valid, and then the account is updated that the requested verification has been provided. Of course, the quality of the image submitted to Covered California can play a large role in AI being able to recognize and verify it or fail the submission.
Many people will print out the income attestation form, fill it out, photograph it, and upload the image to their Covered California. That seems to be perfectly acceptable. With the new form, just make sure you use capital letters that are easily recognizable by the cyber creature known as AI.
Another way to fill out the form is using Adobe Acrobat. The income attestation form is a fillable PDF. If you have Adobe Acrobat on your computer, you can enter the case number, capital letters for the name, and income with Acrobat. The new income form has a calendar feature to select the date of the signature.
Adobe Acrobat allows you to create your own signature using a mouse, or other device, that is unique to you. The signature looks awful, but I prefer it to the typed version as being more authentic. Once created, you can just drag the signature down to signature field on the attestation form. Once the form has been signed in Adobe Acrobat, it cannot be edited, so save a blank copy of the form and save the signed form with a different file name.
When you upload the form in your Covered California, go to the Eligibility Results link on your home page. Select upload documents for the household member that has a verification request. All of the household members may have been tagged with an income verification request. Select the Primary Applicant and the system will take you to the document upload page.
When you select the income verification button, you will be taken to the verification request documents page. Select Income and from the drop-down men select the type of document as Affidavit, attestation is not listed.
The system will ask who the verification pertains to in the household. If you are submitting one income attestation form for the entire household, select all the members and the one upload will be assigned to all of them.
New File Name Attestation
Previously, Covered California had Affidavit from the drop-down menu of forms. This has been changed to Income Self Attestation Form. Do not upload the same income attestation for each household member. In the past, Covered California assumed the income was multiplied by the number of people in the household and it did not match the estimated income in the account.
The alert section of your Covered California home page will display that the income attestation is processing or under review once you have uploaded it to your account.
With AI, the attestation form can be quickly read and you will be offered a summary of the details. You can then select Yes if all looks good and submit. Don’t forget to scroll down to the submit button. Under the Alert section, if all is good, there will be no pending review or processing, it will be accepted and you are all done, for this year.
