You’re never more than a minute away from another problem

You’re never more than a minute away from another problem

How do you describe your experience on the CoveredCA website — the health exchange for California? Here is an experience with an actual client.

Sure he was incredulous when I showed him that his family would save $7000 a year. Actually that’s a little misleading. The insurance itself costs $2000 MORE than his off-exchange policy. It’s the taxpayer subsidy that brings the cost way down. That and shifting his kids to Medi-Cal (California’s version of the welfare program Medicare).

So the insurance costs more, but since it’s subsidized he pays a lot less. So it’s the taxpayers who are getting soaked! And since the client doesn’t pay the higher costs (yet) he is less likely to worry about them. Genius!

But then there is the issue of actually signing up. I helped him, step by step. Over the course of 2 hours: the website failed and kicked us off no less than 5 times. At one point we called the helpline for Covered California. We enjoyed their upbeat hold music for about an hour before we got through. We had moved past the original problem by then, but were glad we had stayed in the hold queue.

We found the doctors, we found the plan, we did everything and hit the button to choose a plan. Bamm! Kicked out again. About this time the client said the website experience was so frustrating that he would have given up some time ago. He summed up his take on it by saying “You’re never more than one minute away from another problem.”

Recipe for Massive Subsidy on Health Premium

Self-employed, married, 2 or more kids (including young adults in college, after college or performing volunteer service abroad). Of course you don’t have to be married, any household of multiple people will help you secure the subsidy.

• Control over your income (keep it in the $50k to $60k range—see the chart below)

•File your 2014 taxes by April 15, 2015.

Yes, we refer to information from you 2012 taxes to predict taxes on income that hasn’t happened yet, and which won’t even be reported until April 2015. Based on that, you receive a subsidy of $700/mo to $1000/mo. Which helps you not to notice that the unsubsidized premium is higher than you expected.

I have a special chart which shows a couple of important things.

 

First, where do you qualify for the subsidy. IMPORTANT! If you make too little you get NO SUBSIDY because you should be on Medi-Cal. And you have to make less than 400% of the Federal Poverty Level to qualify for ANY subsidy. So find your houehold size (first column), and see the income for 138% to 400% of FPL. For a larger family, say a couple, 2 kids in college and 2 kids at home, that would be...$10,500 a month.

But if you make less than 250% of FPL, say $78,975 a year, you qualify for Enhanced Silver Benefits. That means much smaller deductible, AND many services with NO DEDUCTIBLE. If you are in the golden square above, you qualify for Enhanced Silver Benefits.

Many business people who qualify for these generous subsidies don’t even know it.

So what could someone do with the savings? 

Pay for Long-Term Care insurance. Give it to your kids. Retire early. Adult orthodontia. Buy more life insurance. Take extra vacation time. Use some of it to go see the doctor you want.

Contact me and I’ll send you some helpful information. It includes the chart above, along with additional information about Obamacare. To know where you stand you need to know:

• The benefits
• The cost
• The penalties for not having it
• The exceptions

For some people, the penalty for not having insurance may be MORE than the (subsidized) premium. You owe it to yourself to find out where you stand.

And if you are part of a business: small businesses (less than 100 employees) can OPT OUT of many of the most onerous features of Obamacare. I can get you information on that as well. Opting out works best for 10-99 employees, but things can be done even for those with less than 10 employees.