Kevin Knauss: Health, History, Travel, Insurance
Posts related to eligibility for health care programs based on household income such as Covered California, Medi-Cal, Medicare usually based on federal poverty levels.
If you purchased health insurance through Covered California brace yourself for a bevy of letters and notices arriving in your mail box this summer and fall. Covered California will be sending out marketing material, renewal notices, letters asking you to create an online account, reminders to verify your income, and requests for immigration documents. Create […]
Covered California and the IRS have been encouraging individuals and families that have purchased health insurance through the state or federal exchange to update their household income whenever there is a change. The simple act of reporting this change of income through Covered California is considered a qualifying event for a Special Enrollment Period. Once […]
Covered California is ratcheting up the emails and letters to consumers on a variety of topics from immigration verification to renewing their health plans for 2015. Some of these letters for additional information, consent, or to manage verifications will ultimately be confusing to the consumer. In a Certified Insurance Agent webinar, Covered California went over […]
A key service agents provide to ACA health insurance eligible clients is assisting them to determine their Modified Adjusted Gross Income, MAGI. This unfortunately puts agents in the role of being income and tax experts. One of the biggest questions agents get is what qualifies as household income for the purpose of receiving the Advance […]
Covered California has updated the CalHEERS income section of the individual and family plan application to accommodate partial year employment. This was accomplished with the insertion of simple date fields. Now, instead of the annualized income from a job a client has left, the employment can just have a start and end date. Changes to […]
Medi-Cal was one of the biggest mysteries during open enrollment in the new ACA health plans. Even though Covered California advertised a “no wrong door” approach to signing up for health insurance, when a client had to go through the Medi-Cal door, not even Covered California could tell them what to expect. Finally, seven months into the expanded Medi-Cal program, the Department of Health Care Services has finally put together a presentation that goes over the various parts of Medi-Cal and how the system works.
The Covered California CalHEERS online enrollment system continues to be upgraded to fix problems and accommodate household changes, but Certified Insurance Agents (CIA) are rarely notified of the updates. As CIAs helped enroll 40% of Covered California’s households and continue to update their clients changes through the system, agents deserve to be provided regular updates […]
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) allows for Special Enrollment Periods for individuals and families to purchase a health plan through the federal or a state exchange when there is a loss of coverage from a qualifying such as a change in employment. There has been confusion over how to characterize the previous month’s employment wages […]
Different interpretations of monthly verses annual income estimates on the part of Covered California and county Medi-Cal administrators have the potential to leave many Californians who are drawing unemployment benefits without any health insurance. At least one person has been denied the ability to purchase a private health plan with ACA tax credits while being simultaneously excluded enrollment in the ACA expanded Medi-Cal health plan. The conflicting interpretations can leave many people ineligible for either ACA tax credits or Medi-Cal.
Individuals and families who have enrolled in health plans through Healthcare.gov, or a state exchange like Covered California face new challenges as they report income and household changes. Families reporting changes to household size and income may also be triggering changes to their health plan. These changes may result in the entire family becoming eligible for Medicaid, being shifted into a different Enhanced Silver plan or losing the Advance Premium Tax Credit all together.
