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September 30, 2014 at 10:22 AM
Stephanie Armour, a reporter, got a story on the front page of The Wall Street Journal (sweet!) by writing about today’s public exchange plan application information verification deadline.
Roughly 300,000 people who got Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) premium subsidies through exchanges run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have to show why the income information they put in their qualified health plan (QHP) applications conflicts with information from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Another 100,000 HHS exchange QHP holders have to clear up other types of problems, such as questions about their immigration status.
On the one hand, the deadline is an important challenge in and of itself for consumers who have QHP coverage — and especially those who dared to apply for coverage on their own, without the help of an experienced and crafty licensed insurance agent or broker.
On the other hand, I think the bigger story is just that, whatever one happens to think about the idea of PPACA or the idea of the public exchange system or QHP subsidies, in practice, the first year of premium subsidy tax administration is likely to be an ungodly nightmare.
Members of Congress created some of the complexity by adding kind, well-meaning exemptions and exceptions from various requirements to PPACA. HHS then added to the complexity by adding more kind, well-meaning, totally necessary exemptions and exceptions to PPACA regulations. The IRS then translated all of the laws and regulations into forms and produced draft forms that are, one might say, somewhat baroque.
Well, OK. Maybe the age of New Yorker minimalism is over and we need a little more complexity in our lives, but, then, take a look at the draft instructions for the PPACA tax forms. People like to blame those “durn bureaucrats in Washington” for all of our governmental problems, but, of course, most of those “durn bureaucrats in Washington” are nice, well-educated people who thought it would be fun to work in government. Maybe some of the PPACA tax form instruction drafters are in a group therapy session with a trauma counselor right now, sobbing about how they tried to save moderate-income taxpayers from the Alternative Calculation for Marriage Eligibility Worksheet, but that the regulatory currents were just too strong and ripped any possibility of simplicity out of their arms.
