The National Association of Health Underwriters has tried to show Affordable Care Act program managers that it can take a practical, apolitical approach to thinking about ACA issues.
Some of the Washington-based agent group’s members strongly supported passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 and its sister, the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. Many loathe the ACA package.
But NAHU itself has tried to focus mainly on efforts to improve how the ACA, ACA regulations and ACA programs work for consumers, employer plan sponsors and agents. In Washington, for example, NAHU has helped the District of Columbia reach out to local agents. NAHU also offers an exchange agent certification course for HealthCare.gov agents.
Related: NAHU defends ACA risk programs
Now NAHU is investing some of the credit it has earned for ACA fairness in an effort to shape draft eligibility screening regulations proposed this summer by the Internal Revenue Service, an arm of the U.S. Treasury Department.
Janet Stokes Trautwein, NAHU’s executive vice president and chief executive officer, says she and colleagues at NAHU talked to many agents and brokers about the draft regulations.
For a look at just a little of what she wrote in her comment letter, read on:
The NAHU wants exchanges to warn applicants about the consequences of income eligibility fraud when they apply for coverage. (AP Photo)
1. Exchanges have to communicate better
The IRS included many ideas in the draft regulations about ways to keep consumers honest when they apply for Affordable Care Act exchange premium tax credit subsidies.
ACA drafters wanted people to be able to use the subsidies to reduce out-of-pocket coverage costs as the year went on, to reduce those costs to about what the employee’s share of the payments for solid group health coverage might be.
To do that, the drafters and implementers at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the IRS came up with a system that requires consumers to predict in advance what their incoming will be in the coming year.
Consumers who predict their income will be too low and get too much tax credit money are supposed to true up with the IRS when the file their taxes the following spring. The IRS has an easy time getting the money when consumers are supposed to get refunds. It can then deduct the payments from the refunds. When consumers are not getting refunds, or simply fail to file tax returns, the IRS has no easy way to get the cash back.
The exchanges and the IRS also face the problem that some people earn too little to qualify for tax credits but too much to qualify for Medicaid. Those people have an incentive to lie and say their income will be higher than it is likely to be.
Trautwein writes in her letter that the ACA exchange system could help by doing more to educate consumers when the consumers are applying for exchange coverage.
“The health insurance exchange marketplaces [should] be required to clearly notify consumers of the consequences of potential income-based eligibility fraud at the time of application, in order to help discourage it from ever happening,” Trautwein writes.
Related: 3 darts for agents in the new ACA 2018 draft rules
The NAHU wants to see the IRS and HHS to get their eligibility systems to sync up. (Image: Thinkstock)