Income Verification Delayed for Subsidzed Health Care for 2014

President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform law starts January 1^st 2014. According to the law in order to receive tax subsidies to help buy insurance, enrollees must have verified incomes ranging from 100 percent to 400 percent of the federal poverty line and not have access to affordable insurance offered through an employer. On July 2nd, the administration announced that it would not require employers with 50 workers or more to provide insurance benefits until 2015, a one-year delay that stirred speculation about the possibility of further delays.

Income Verification Delayed

Days after delaying health insurance requirements for employers, the Obama administration has decided to roll back requirements for the exchanges to verify the income and health coverage status of people who apply for subsidized coverage.

Random Sampling of Income

Regulations released on Friday by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) give exchanges, until 2015 to begin random sampling of subsidized enrolled members to determine if they are offered afford coverage through their employer. The rules now only require random sampling of actual income on income eligibility in 2014. (Rather than comprehensive checks required by the law)

Attestation of Income

Health Care Reform was suppose to require marketplaces to verify each enrollee’s income status, in an effort to prevent fraud. “For income verification, for the first year of operations, we are providing (state and federal) exchanges with temporarily expanded discretion to accept an attestation of projected annual household income without further verification,” as the current rule states.

Buying votes

With the administration making these moves it should be quite clear to everyone that Health Care Reform is not going to live up to its promises. It is quite apparent this is just another political game by the politicians to help with their re-election results in November of 2014, by allowing people to receive a bride through subsidized Health Care for 2014 in exchange for their vote on November 2014.