New Obamacare ‘snafu’ results in 800K ‘messed up’ tax returns
HHS Officials are trying to fix a problem which reportedly effected 800,000 Americans who have health insurance through Obamacare. CBS says the figure is over 1 million in their report which calls it a “snafu.”
The errors occurred on a new form that helps Obamacare enrollees figure out whether they qualify for a subsidy that would pay all or part of their premiums, and how big that subsidy should be. Information used to calculate those subsidies was wrong on about 20 percent of tax forms, HHS officials said. The errors would cause some taxpayers to claim too large a subsidy and others to claim less than they’re actually eligible for.
More Obamacare bugs…
President Barack Obama meets with senior advisors in the Roosevelt Room. 2/16/09. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
This is just the first year of the Affordable Care Act filing for those people who bought insurance through HealthCare.gov and the Obamacare public relations group had just overcome the disastrous rollout and Internet problems.
Andy Slavitt, principal deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the agency is already notifying taxpayers of the mistake and will be sending out revised forms. The “vast majority” of Obamacare enrollees haven’t filed their taxes yet, and can simply use the new, corrected information when they do, Slavitt said.
“So we’re notifying people,” Slavitt told reporters. “We’ve already begun notifying people today. They’ll get a corrected form beginning the first week of March.”
The administration has also announced a special enrollment period from March 15 to April 30 for people who did not realize they’d have to pay a penalty for not having health care coverage.
Of the 800,000 people who received inaccurate forms, about 50,000 have already filed their taxes, Slavitt said.
The IRS is figuring out how to handle those returns. Obamacare’s subsidies are tied to the cost of “benchmark” plan in each region. But these 800,000 tax forms list the wrong premium for those plans. Slavitt said HHS is still investigating how the error occurred.
