About Me

My photo
Beverly Hills, California, United States
Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

Translate

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Immigration Status May Cost People Obamacare Coverage

Politico
By Brett Norman
August 12, 2014

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is sending letters this week to 310,000 people whose citizenship or immigration status is in question, saying they must send documents by Sept. 5 or they will lose their coverage at the end of that month.

The individuals receiving those warning notices are a portion of the almost 1 million people with citizenship or immigration “data-matching” errors that CMS has been working to resolve since May, according to a release Tuesday.

The agency said it has closed 450,000 cases to date and has an additional 210,000 “in progress.”

The letters are being sent in English and Spanish to people who have not responded after multiple efforts to contact them by mail, phone and email, officials said. CMS will try three more times to contact them before the Sept. 5 deadline; after that, another letter will be sent saying that coverage will be canceled Sept. 30.

Agency spokesman Aaron Albright said CMS had closed some cases because the agency had received the information needed to confirm citizenship or immigration status. No one has yet lost coverage because of these documentation issues, he said.

CMS will contact consumers about inconsistencies in household income, on which premium subsidies are based. CMS would not say how many of those cases are outstanding.

The CMS push to verify information involves only those who enrolled through the federal HealthCare.gov marketplace. States that built their own exchanges are clearing up other application data issues themselves.


CMS published a map showing where these final warning notices are being sent. Nearly 94,000 are going to Florida, more than any other state. The Dakotas and Wyoming will receive the fewest: 300 each.

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com

No comments: