I Have Your Solution to Obama Care
So it is clear that we are not going to get a repeal nor replace to Obama Care this year and they will have higher premiums than last year. NO WORRIES, I have your solution to Obama Care that won’t break the bank! We just introduced a new plan for people with pre-existing conditions…I have a solution for everyone. Please don’t go uninsured because you don’t think you can’t afford it. Contact me to see how you can have a permanent health insurance plan, zero deductible, nation-wide PPO network, and no premium increases.
Simple Comparison ObamaCare vs. Republican Plan
Obamacare vs Republican plan compared – BBC News
Now, with a governing majority, they’ve had to come up with a replacement plan – a task that has proved much more challenging than they may have imagined.
Here’s a look at some key differences between the existing law, informally known as Obamacare, and the American Health Care Act, crafted by the Trump administration and Republican leadership in the House of Representatives.
Repeal…Individual Mandate
Obamacare: All Americans are required to have health insurance or pay a tax penalty.
Republican plan: The mandate is repealed, but individuals who forgo health insurance for
more than 63 days must pay a 30% surcharge on their insurance premiums for a year.
Repeal…Employer Mandate
Obamacare: Companies with more than 50 employees are required to offer health insurance or pay a penalty.
Republican plan: This mandate is repealed.
Repeal…Taxes
Obamacare: Raised Medicare taxes on the wealthy and imposed new taxes on medical
devices, health insurers, drug companies, investment income, tanning salons and high-end health insurance plans.
Republican plan: Repeals most Obamacare taxes and delays implementation of the tax on
high-end health insurance plans to 2026.
Keep…Insurance for Dependents
Obamacare: Requires insurers to allow children under age 26 to be covered by their parents’ policies
Republican plan: Maintains this requirement.
Change…Essential health benefits
Obamacare: Requires all insurance plans to cover certain health conditions and services,
such as emergency room visits, cancer treatment, annual physical exams, prescription drug costs and mental health counselling.
Republican plan: Allows states to define what benefits are mandated or opt out of the
requirement entirely.
Change…Pre-existing condition coverage
Obamacare: Prohibits insurers from denying coverage or charging more to individuals who have pre-existing medical conditions.
Republican plan: States can let insurers charge as much as they like to sick people.
Allocates $8 billion to help subsidize those patients.
Change…Medicaid
Obamacare: Expanded Medicaid health insurance for the poor to cover more low-income
individuals.
Republican plan: Phases out Medicaid expansion to reduce federal funding on the
program by $88O billion over the next decade, and gives states greater flexibility in
administering the program in exchange for fixed federal spending.
Change…Women’s healthcare
Obamacare: lnsurance companies prohibited from charging women more than men for the same health plan and must provide core services including maternity care and contraceptives.
Republican plan: lnsurance companies still be banned from charging women more, but states could allow insurers to drop maternity care and contraceptives from basic benefits. Also bans women from using federal tax credits to buy a plan that covers abortion.
Change…Older Americans
Obamacare: lnsurers can charge older Americans no more than three times the cost for
younger Americans
Republican plan: lnsurers can charge older Americans five times as much as younger
Americans. States would also be able to set their own ratio.
Change…Subsidies
Obamacare: Provided refundable tax credits for low-income individuals who purchased their insurance on government-run marketplaces and support for some out-of-pocket medical expenses.
Republican plan: Alters formula for tax credits, which will expand the benefit to more middleclass Americans but probably raise the costs for some elderly and less-affluent individuals.
How to Correct Errors in Your Medical Records
By law, you have the right to correct errors you find in your medical records. Those corrections are referred to in the law as “amendments.” The records themselves are called a “designated record set.”
In particular, as medical records are transferred from paper to digital, there are any number of mistakes that are being made. Your review and correction is definitely warranted.
Once you have obtained, then reviewed your medical records and have found an error, you’ll want to follow this procedure:
1. Determine exactly what the error is and whether it needs correcting. Sometimes errors are simply typographical and may or may not require correction. However, any piece of information that will have an effect on your diagnosis, treatment, or ability to be contacted, whether it can affect you or your health today or in the future, should be corrected. Further, problems with medical identity theft are on the rise, so information that regards payment, billing or your personal identity should be corrected.
Here are some examples:
- If any medical test results, symptoms or treatment decisions are recorded incorrectly, they should be corrected immediately. Your care and future health could hinge on their accuracy.
- If your phone number is incorrect, you’ll want to make sure it gets corrected immediately. Failure to do so will result in the wrong information being replicated.
- If the record says your appointment was at 2 p.m., but you never saw the doctor until 3:30 p.m., that may not have any bearing on your future health or billing information needs.
What is going on with the Individual Mandate Tax??
Major Blow to Obamacare Mandate: IRS Won’t Reject Tax Returns That Don’t Answer Health Insurance Question
The tax agency has stopped requiring individual filers to indicate whether they maintained health coverage or paid the mandate penalty as required under the law
How much difference does a single line on a tax form make? For Obamacare’s individual mandate, the answer might be quite a lot.
Following President Donald Trump’s executive order instructing agencies to provide relief from the health law, the Internal Revenue Service appears to be taking a more lax approach to the coverage requirement.
The health law’s individual mandate requires everyone to either maintain qualifying health coverage or pay a tax penalty, known as a “shared responsibility payment.” The IRS was set to require filers to indicate whether they had maintained coverage in 2016 or paid the penalty by filling out line 61 on their form 1040s. Alternatively, they could claim exemption from the mandate by filing a form 8965
For most filers, filling out line 61 would be mandatory. The IRS would not accept 1040s unless the coverage box was checked, or the shared responsibility payment noted, or the exemption form included. Otherwise they would be labeled “silent returns” and rejected.
Instead, however, filling out that line will be optional.
Earlier this month, the IRS quietly altered its rules to allow the submission of 1040s with nothing on line 61. The IRS says it still maintains the option to follow up with those who elect not to indicate their coverage status, although it’s not clear what circumstances might trigger a follow up.
But what would have been a mandatory disclosure will instead be voluntary. Silent returns will no longer be automatically rejected. The change is a direct result of the executive order President Donald Trump issued in January directing the government to provide relief from Obamacare to individuals and insurers, within the boundaries of the law.
“The recent executive order directed federal agencies to exercise authority and discretion available to them to reduce potential burden,” the IRS said in a statement to Reason. “Consistent with that, the IRS has decided to make changes that would continue to allow electronic and paper returns to be accepted for processing in instances where a taxpayer doesn’t indicate their coverage status.”
The tax agency says the change will reduce the health law’s strain on taxpayers. “Processing silent returns means that taxpayer returns are not systemically rejected, allowing them to be processed and minimizing burden on taxpayers, including those expecting a refund,” the IRS statement said.
The change may seem minor. But it makes it clear that following Trump’s executive order, the agency’s trajectory is towards a less strict enforcement process.
Although the new policy leaves Obamacare’s individual mandate on the books, it may make it easier for individuals to go without coverage while avoiding the penalty. Essentially, if not explicitly, it is a weakening of the mandate enforcement mechanism.
“It’s hard to enforce something without information,” says Ryan Ellis, a Senior Fellow at the Conservative Reform Network.
The move has already raised questions about its legality. Federal law gives the administration broad authority to provide exemptions from the mandate. But “it does not allow the administration not to enforce the mandate, which it appears they may be doing here,” says Michael Cannon, health policy director at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Unless the Trump administration maintains the mandate is unconstitutional, the Constitution requires them to enforce it.”
“The mandate can only be weakened by Congress,” says Ellis. “This is a change to how the IRS is choosing to enforce it. They will count on voluntary disclosure of non-coverage rather than asking themselves.”
The IRS notes that taxpayers are still required to pay the mandate penalty, if applicable. “Legislative provisions of the ACA law are still in force until changed by the Congress, and taxpayers remain required to follow the law and pay what they may owe,” the agency statement said.
Ellis says the new policy doesn’t fully rise to the level of declining to enforce the law. “If the IRS turns a blind eye to people’s status, that isn’t quite not enforcing it,” he says. “It’s more like the IRS wanting to maintain plausible deniability.”
Tax software companies are already making note of the change. Drake Software, which provides services to tax professionals, recently sent out a notice explaining the change in policy. As of February 3, the notice said, the IRS “will now accept an e-filed return that does not indicate either full-year coverage or an individual shared responsibility payment or does not include an exemption on Form 8965, as required by IRS instructions, Form 1040, line 61.”
The mandate is a key component of Obamacare’s coverage scheme, which is built on what experts sometimes describe as a “three-legged stool.” The law requires health insurers to sell to all comers regardless of health history, and offers subsidies to lower income individuals in order to offset the cost of coverage. In order to prevent people from signing up for coverage only after getting sick, it also requires most individuals to maintain qualifying coverage or face a tax penalty. While defending the health law in court, the Obama administration maintained that the mandate was essential to the structure of the law, designed to make sure that people did not take advantage of its protections.
In a 2012 case challenging the law’s insurance requirement, the Supreme Court ruled that the individual mandate was constitutional as a tax penalty. The IRS is in charge of collecting payments.
Some health policy experts have argued that the mandate was already too weak to be effective, as a result of the many exemptions that are included. A 2012 report by the consulting firm Milliman found that the mandate penalty offered only a modest financial incentives for families making 300-400 percent of the federal poverty line. More recently, health insurers have said that individuals signing up for coverage and then quickly dropping it after major health expenses is a key driver of losses, and rising health insurance premiums.
It’s too early to say whether the change will ultimately make any difference. But given the centrality of the mandate to the law’s coverage scheme and the unsteadiness of the law’s health insurance exchanges, with premiums rising and insurers scaling back participation, it is possible that even a marginal weakening of the mandate could cause further dysfunction. Health insurers have said the mandate is a priority, and asked for it to be strengthened. Weaker enforcement of the mandate could cause insurance carriers to further reduce participation in the exchanges. One major insurer, Humana, said today that it would completely exit Obamacare’s exchanges after this year.
It is also possible that congressional Republicans will make it moot by repealing much of the law, including its individual mandate, which, as a tax, can be taken down with just 51 Senate votes.
Regardless of its direct impact, however, the change may signal that the Trump administration intends to water down enforcement of the health law’s most controversial requirement, even if those steps are seemingly small. The Trump administration may not be tearing Obamacare down entirely, but it appears to be taking steps to weaken the law, however subtly, one line at a time.
Correction: The IRS did not reject silent returns last year, as this story originally indicated. The plan was to go into effect this year, for 2016 returns, but the IRS reversed course on February 3. Reason regrets the error.