Kevin Knauss: Health, History, Travel, Insurance
Develop a mobile application that tourists, visitors, and local residents can download onto their mobile device that would show a variety of historical sites, structures, landmarks, and museums within prescribed radius around their current location or region they may be visiting in the future. Some people have compared the historical sites mobile app to the dating apps, where the history lover is searching for an afternoon date at a historic site or museum.
The Special Enrollment Period, Qualifying Life Events, and changes to income are VERY date sensitive. It can also be a little confusing in terms of what dates to use. If you don’t enter the correct dates, such as when income stopped or started, the application process can go sideways and you might be determined eligible for Medi-Cal. When in doubt, call your agent or the Covered California customer service line to determine the correct dates for your qualifying life event.
Medicare has released their new Procedure Price Lookup website to help Medicare beneficiaries estimate the cost of health care procedures. As Medicare indicates in their footnotes, the prices are national averages based on 2018 data. Prices and the cost-sharing amount for the beneficiary will vary by region. The prices are for outpatient health care services […]
The benchmark 100% federal poverty level income for a single adult increased 3% from $12,140 in 2018 to $12,490 for 2019. The all important Covered California premium tax credit eligibility income (138% of the FPL) for a single adult increased from $16,754 for 2018 to $17,237 in 2019. This means a single adult now has to have an annual Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) of $17,237 to be eligible for Covered California if they apply for health insurance in 2019.
You must apply for the Medicare Savings Program through your local Medi-Cal county office. You apply for the Social Security Extra Help program directly with Social Security. If you are determined eligible for the Medicare Savings Program you will be considered a Dual Eligible: eligible for both Medicare and Medi-Cal. Your eligibility can change throughout the year based on income but is usually re-evaluated on a yearly basis. Whenever you eligibility changes, you are eligible for a Special Enrollment Period to change or enter into different Medicare Advantage or Medicare Prescription Drug Plans.
The cost of the individual mandate is nothing compared to the cost of a decent health insurance plan. People are not enrolling in health insurance because it is too damn expensive. I don’t know what percentage of the decline in new enrollments for Covered California is due to expensive health insurance and they don’t know either. Talk to any health insurance agent they will tell you they fielded many calls from consumers wanting a lower rate on health insurance. They were willing to take anything, even if crappiest of plans if they could just afford it. I don’t sell them, but I had to inform people of the health care sharing ministries. These health care sharing plans are not insurance, but they can seem like a health plan for half the cost of a Covered California plan. How many people enrolled in these health care sharing plans and by-passed Covered California and the off-exchange plans altogether?
The first comparison was of two individuals at a Sacramento company enrolled in a Sutter small group HMO Silver plan. The rate for the 60-year-old employee is $838 and $688 for the 56-year-old employee. An IFP Silver plan directly from Sutter Health Plus HMO is $1,115 for the 60-year-old and $958 for the 56-year-old. The IFP rate is 25% and 28% higher than the small group plan at the respective ages. The lowest IFP plan available to these employees in the Sacramento region is a Kaiser Silver HMO plan at $990 for age 60 and $851 for age 56.
The $1 increase in wages per hour between 2018 and 2019 is an 8% increase. The FPL has been increasing approximately 1% every year. But if we assume the FPL increases 2% that would put the new Medi-Cal monthly income level at $1,425. The increased minimum wage for 2019 still makes the individual working 30 hours per week ineligible for MAGI Medi-Cal.
Where a primary source of confusion starts to creep into the preliminary eligibility determination for either Medi-Cal or Covered California hinges on when the new FPL amounts are considered for eligibility. This is where the rules concerning determining eligibility are not necessarily aligned between Medi-Cal and Covered California. The rules put forth by the ACA govern how Covered California applies the FPL amounts for determining eligibility for the Premium Tax Credit subsidy, which are slightly different than Medi-Cal. The Department of Health Care Services, the agency that administers Medi-Cal, must abide by older federal rules for eligibility determinations.
On the old 1040 tax forms you report any repayment of excess Premium Tax Credit on line 46, and any additional PTC owed to you on line 69. For 2018, repayment of the PTC subsidy is reported on Schedule 2 Tax (line 46) and additional subsidy tax credit is listed on Schedule 5 (line 70) Other Payments and Refundable Credits. It’s important to know where to find these numbers if you are trying to forecast for the next year and are using the past figures as a guide.
