Kevin Knauss: Health, History, Travel, Insurance
Posts related to the Covered California application, consumer account, estimating income, household size, monthly subsidies, health plans, Medi-Cal, and terminations.
Covered California has developed a reprieve from immediate reporting to SAWS in the event of an error on the application that triggers Medi-Cal eligibility. The one-day delay in reporting the eligibility results to Medi-Cal is outlined in the CalHEERS 19.7 release scheduled to be implement on July 22, 2019.
The family continued to wait, not paying any of the invoices they received because they figured that Covered California was working to resolve the issue. The health insurance plan was terminated by the health plan for lack of payment. If the consumer does not pay the all the premiums after 90 days, the consumer loses the right to make all the back-premium payments and reinstate the health plan. This is what happened to the family.
The 1095-A is almost as important as filing taxes. Even if you did not owe taxes in 2017, but still received the APTC, you have to file a tax return. Covered California has been notified by the IRS if a current household, receiving the subsidy, has not filed a 2017 tax return. Covered California is sending out letters to consumers that their current monthly APTC subsidy will be terminated if they do not resolve the issue.
If the carriers feel threatened by the HCSM plans, they should lobby the legislature to ban those plans as well. Don’t use health insurance agents, under the guise of retribution from Covered California, to achieve the objective of limiting the enrollment in these plans. I completely get that if all the healthy people leave the pool, the carriers are going to have problems paying claims, and may exit the market altogether. We don’t want this to happen. But I’m just the agent. Don’t shoot me to protect your business model.
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.
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?
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.
Basically, the redesigned 2018 form 1040 has made it more difficult to quickly locate all the necessary information for estimating a household’s MAGI. Virtually all of the dollar amounts were listed on the first page of the old form 1040. Now Covered California participants will have to review page 2 of the 1040 and Schedule 1 income and deductions to get most of the information for their estimated MAGI.
Even though the Covered California programs indicated one subsidy amount, a higher amount was actually applied to the first family member’s health insurance premium. It is clear from the displays that Covered California is applying too much APTC. In the first illustration, John was eligible for $272.12 per month, but Covered California applied $377.12.
When your son or daughter is earning money from a job, but still living at home, it can be a bit confusing when applying for health insurance through Covered California. When do you count your child’s income for Medi-Cal or Covered California? Should your child have their own health plan? Do they file their own taxes? Are they still going to school?
Kevin Knauss provides no cost health insurance rate quotes and enrollment.
Kevin Knauss, Education Before Enrollment, Health Insurance Bridge
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