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Government

AP: Applying for Obamacare ‘Enormously Time Consuming and Complex’

Mar. 12, 2013 8:40pm Jason Howerton

A draft copy of the 21-page of a Health and Human Services Department form proposed for use to apply for low-cost insurance from Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program is photographed in Washington, Tuesday March 12, 2013. (AP Photo/J. David Ake)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Applying for benefits under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul could be as daunting as doing your taxes.

The government’s draft application runs 15 pages for a three-person family. An outline of the online version has 21 steps, some with additional questions.

Seven months before the Oct. 1 start of enrollment season for millions of uninsured Americans, the idea that getting health insurance could be as easy as shopping online at Amazon or Travelocity is starting to look like wishful thinking.

At least three major federal agencies, including the IRS, will scrutinize your application. Checking your identity, income and citizenship is supposed to happen in real time, if you apply online.

That’s just the first part of the process, which lets you know if you qualify for financial help. The government asks to see what you’re making because Obama’s Affordable Care Act is means-tested, with lower-income people getting the most generous help to pay premiums.

Once you’re finished with the money part, actually picking a health plan will require additional steps, plus a basic understanding of insurance jargon.

And it’s a mandate, not a suggestion. The law says virtually all Americans must carry health insurance starting next year, although most will just keep the coverage they now have through their jobs, Medicare or Medicaid.

Some are concerned that a lot of uninsured people will be overwhelmed and simply give up.

“This lengthy draft application will take a considerable amount of time to fill out and will be difficult for many people to be able to complete,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, an advocacy group supporting the health care law. “It does not get you to the selection of a plan.”

“When you combine those two processes, it is enormously time consuming and complex,” added Pollack. He’s calling for the government to simplify the form and, more important, for an army of counselors to help uninsured people navigate the new system. It’s unclear who would pay for these navigators.

Drafts of the paper application and a 60-page description of the online version were quietly posted online by the Health and Human Services Department, seeking feedback from industry and consumer groups. Those materials, along with a recent HHS presentation to insurers, run counter to the vision of simplicity promoted by administration officials.

“We are not just signing up for a dating service here,” said Sam Karp, a vice president of the California HealthCare Foundation, who nonetheless gives the administration high marks for distilling it all into a workable form. Karp was part of an independent group that separately designed a model application.

The government estimates its online application will take a half hour to complete, on average. If you need a break, or have to gather supporting documents, you can save your work and come back later. The paper application is estimated to take an average of 45 minutes.

The new coverage starts next Jan. 1. Uninsured people will apply through new state-based markets, also called exchanges.

Middle-class people will be eligible for tax credits to help pay for private insurance plans, while low-income people will be steered to safety-net programs like Medicaid.

Because of opposition to the health care law in some states, the federal government will run the new insurance markets in about half the states. And states that reject the law’s Medicaid expansion will be left with large numbers of poor people uninsured.

HHS estimates it will receive more than 4.3 million applications for financial assistance in 2014, with online applications accounting for about 80 percent of them. Because families can apply together, the government estimates 16 million people will be served.

Here are some pros and cons on how the system is shaping up:

- Pro: If you apply online, you’re supposed to be able to get near-instantaneous verification of your identity, income, and citizenship or immigration status. An online government clearinghouse called the Data Services Hub will ping Social Security for birth records, IRS for income data and Homeland Security for immigration status. “That is a brand new thing in the world,” said Karp.

- Con: If your household income has changed in the past year or so and you want help paying your premiums, be prepared to do some extra work. You’re applying for help based on your expected income in 2014. But the latest tax return the IRS would have is for 2012. If you landed a better-paying job, got laid off, or your spouse went back to work, you’ll have to provide added documentation.

- Pro: Even with all the complexity, the new system could still end up being simpler than what some people go through now to buy their own insurance. You won’t have to fill out a medical questionnaire, although you do have to answer whether or not you have a disability. Even if you are disabled, you can still get coverage for the same premium a healthy person of your age would pay.

-Con: If anyone in your household is offered health insurance on the job but does not take it, be prepared for some particularly head-scratching questions. For example: “What’s the name of the lowest cost self-only health plan the employee listed above could enroll in at this job?”

HHS spokeswoman Erin Shields Britt said in a statement the application is a work in progress, “being refined thanks to public input.”

It will “help people make apples-to-apples comparisons of costs and coverage between health insurance plans and learn whether they can get a break in costs,” she added.

But what if you just want to buy health insurance in your state’s exchange, and you’re not interested in getting any help from the government?

You’ll still have to fill out an application, but it will be shorter.

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Comments (16)

kofromok
Posted on March 25, 2013 at 4:09pm
Check out this link about the hours required to complete a From 1040-EZ which is so much easier than the paper Obamacare Application. They are not telling the truth in terms of time it will take. http://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040/ar03.html#d0e62319

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hades3
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 6:37pm
Those who doubt Obama is using Medicare to fund Obamacare, I have a different opinion. In November of 2112, my wife had a medical procedure. Medicare reimbursed the provider in the amount agreed to by the Medicare and the medical facility, there was no co-pay. I’m too have the same procedure at the same facility within a few days. I too am on Medicare. The facility advised, I would be required too pay a $120.00 co-pay, since the Medicare reimbursement had been reduced as of January 1, 2013.
As each day passes, people will see the affects of the debacle known as Obamacare.. I’m not surprised. Those who voted for Obama , thinking their health care would be free, will not only be surprised, they are in for a shock.

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DebateMe
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 12:01pm
Everything run by the government is overly-complicated and time consuming. At the same time, my heart doesn’t bleed for the obama voters out there who might b!tch and moan about having to spend some of their precious time away from mtv and starbucks to grab a piece of their free healthcare at the private sector’s expense.

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Zipit
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 9:46am
“Applying for benefits under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul could be as daunting as doing your taxes.”

So what’s the problem? Didn’t Huessein authorize the hiring of 16 or so thousand IRS agents to help us understand, “The Affordable Health Care Act”???????

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media-bias-steals-elections
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 9:35am
Frankly, I don’t even see how this is going to work, because in order to buy health insurance, you can’t buy it directly from a company online, you have to talk to an insurance agent? Or is this why Obama care was passed, insurance companies are tired of paying insurance agents commissions?

You people have no idea what these politicians are saying behind closed doors, do you?

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- rosegrower
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 12:41pm
  That’s what the “insurance exchanges” are all about – the Federal government has mandated that every state staff an exchange where people who don’t have health insurance will have to go and buy a policy. This, of course, is a cost that your state will have to incur (meaning your state taxes will go up), unless like my state, they refuse to do it; then the Feds will come in and set up an office, also at your expense.
  
  I think that 2015 will be a complete train wreck – it will be the first time many of the Obama voters will be forced first to fill out a 1040 form (can you imagine the fine NYC graduates who are functionally illiterate having to figure out how to fill out a tax form?) and then when they are given permission to get a subsidy for their insurance, will then have to fill out this new form. These are people who have never had to do paperwork for anything; I suspect this means there will be yet another federal program available that hires literate people to fill out the forms for the illiterates. I hope the people who voted for “free” health care enjoy it!
  
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SamIamTwo
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 9:14am
I’ve known that when you get a new law, you get new regulations, you hire more people and you get more forms to fill out. It’s what the gov’t does best.

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wellitsallright
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 2:05am
Something tells me this is not a “Pro: If you apply online, you’re supposed to be able to get near-instantaneous verification of your identity, income, and citizenship or immigration status. An online government clearinghouse called the Data Services Hub will ping Social Security for birth records, IRS for income data and Homeland Security for immigration status. “That is a brand new thing in the world,” said Karp.”

I wonder how this will work out with identity theft.

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- objectivetruth
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 8:56am
  Oh you mean when someone has used your ssn to recieve treatment.You can’t stop treatment as you can’t find the sob and HIPPA won’t allow them to release the records to you the rightful owner of the ssn.Where they go out of their way to make sure you are terrorized tortured and harmed on purpose.[In my case its what the ID Thieves were actually after]Where you need a protective order and can’t take one out as you can’t find the jurisdiction it needs to be served in.Where by the government seems to be protecting the thief
  would be murderer.Where they go into courts that have no genuine jurisdiction over you.Where they purposely send it to the wrong address even if they do get the right jurisdiction.Where the fifth admendment is routinely denied .Do you think the latest problem with the VA is anything new?Its not its just now all of you will be subject to it.Don’t you just feel all warm and fuzzy knowing the genocide is fast approaching?
  Just wait until they throughly and utterly ruin your life in ways that can never be healed or mended.All because of crimes you never commited medical problems you never had .
  
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NigelTufnel
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 1:49am
Incredible how silent the libs are on obamacare since its passage. They can barely defend it with a straight face. My favorite is the fact that obamacare will be linking up with other government departments in order to “speed things up”. Premium payments will be set up as wired transfers. Then u lose your job And it will take three months to get your income re-assessed. This would be funny if the outcomes were not going to be so tragic.

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- AvengerK
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 1:54pm
  ah yes but NIGEL..how else will the government know if you’re not covered anymore under your employer’s benefits and so have to pay the Roberts’ Tax of the Individual Mandate?
  
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TJexcite
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 12:09am
It was not about single payer as the end goal of Obamacare if that single payer does not work. It is about control. Even if they control one to the grave.

Just like Romneycare right or so they said in October.

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sinner-saint
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 12:04am
None of this is coming out my income taxes. I pay for my healthcare and I won’t/refuse to pay for other people’s free healthcare insurance…………..just the way it is and will be.

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- objectivetruth
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 8:59am
  I know you think that.The only way it won’t is if you quit working or fold up your business.They will just go around it .The only way they won’t is if you are a foriegn national.Or you work in an exempt industry or country.Then its only a certain percentage that isn’t taxed.
  
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circleDwagons
Posted on March 12, 2013 at 11:48pm
Cool. The guberment will have more info on us. Should make finding tax cheats easier.

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- loriann12
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 8:06am
  Unless they work for the government, then it will be oops, they slipped through.
  
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