<p>[Covered</a> California removes glitchy online directory of doctors - latimes.com](<a href=“http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-exchange-doctors-20131017,0,7017010.story]Covered”>Covered California removes glitchy online directory of doctors)</p>
<p>Officials won’t say how many of the visitors to the Covered California site have actually completed an application.</p>
<p>In my area, BCBS has the largest provider network by far, and according to the doctors I know, they have not renegotiated participation for the exchange plans separately. So I can see that my doctors are all still on the BCBS PPO list, and I don’t have to wonder.</p>
<p>Yeah you! That is not the case here and that is the problem. Very good for some. Very bad for others.</p>
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<p>lol hope springs eternal. </p>
<p>How much does it cost to staff 11,000 locations 7 days a week to get 1 customer a day? Yikes.</p>
<p>TexasPG & NJRes – no need to speculate, I’ve read the text of the Senate Bill. There is no new rule that would directly impact applicants. The law already had verification procedures written in. The new law simply requires that the HHS Secretary certify and report in 6 months as to the verification process that is in place. This will probably have little or no impact on the process of applying for subsidies. It is a back end change – it might impact the way that some apps are handled down the line.</p>
<p>Here’s a link to the bill text:
<a href=“https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr2775/text[/url]”>https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr2775/text</a></p>
<p>And here is the specific provision:</p>
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<p>You can start by asking your own doctor/s what plans they will be participating in and whether there is/was a renegotiation. They may have useful information for you.</p>
<p>No question, it would be better to have it on the web site for everyone, I’m just suggesting work-arounds.</p>
<p>If wmt was taking care of it, not much. But the govt would have to subsidize the workers because the pay is so low.</p>
<p>I am with calmom on this. I dont think wmt is involved. I think we would hear about it.</p>
<p>One thing I do hope happens is as the tech problems are fixed, the capacity is large enough to handle people who wait until the last minute to sign up.</p>
<p>There was an error in my post above that I tried to correct but my editing time ran out. I referred to “in 6 months” – that was my faulty memory, the provision itself shows two reporting dates – one on January 1, the other on July 1st. The substantial report would be the July 1-- I assume the January 1 report will just be a detailing of the procedures already in place.</p>
<p>Not sure if I’m remembering correctly (or even if what I read was factually correct), but the additional procedure would be the January 1 deadline for detailing the verification procedures. That might not have been required before? Previously, it was just the July 1 reporting date with no detail before that of the verification procedures?</p>
<p>What happens if you apply for subsidies to which you are entitled, but you don’t have any IRS record because you have never filed taxes before? They check your SSN and your IRS record, and discover that you don’t have any reported income, and you’re golden?</p>
<p>ACA and students who will start college next fall – is there some clarification on how this will work?</p>
<p>A friend who currently buys insurance on her own for herself and her son is looking at exchange policies – they’re low income, and should get quite a bit of subsidy on the exchange. But, her son has no idea where he’s going to end up for college next fall. Can she sign up for coverage starting Jan 1st for both of them (he’s her dependent and a minor) and then, if he ends up at college someplace where the plan she chooses doesn’t have a network, can he enroll in a different plan in August?</p>
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<p>I had read anecdotes about limited networks so I was also relieved to see that all of my doctors are participating. I also checked out D’s doctors since she will need to use the exchange when she goes off her Dad’s policy. Hoping by then to have a small business policy for the two of us.</p>
<p>CTTC (re your post #1710) – I think it’s more of an additional report being required than a material change. There is already a regulatory process in play which works on its own cycles and deadlines, a little harder to follow in the past couple of weeks because one thing that got shut down were updates to the web sites gpo.gov and federalregister.gov web site where the notices get posted. </p>
<p>The main sticking point is not income verification, but the process of verifying that subsidy applicants are not otherwise eligible for employer-provided insurance (which in turn usually disqualifies them from subsidies). See: [Verifying</a> Eligibility For Affordable Care Act Subsidies: Access To Employer-Sponsored Insurance ? Health Affairs Blog](<a href=“http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2013/09/16/verifying-eligibility-for-affordable-care-act-subsidies-access-to-employer-sponsored-insurance/]Verifying”>http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2013/09/16/verifying-eligibility-for-affordable-care-act-subsidies-access-to-employer-sponsored-insurance/)</p>
<p>To summarize calmom’s link:</p>
<p>The concern is whether consumers will get subsidies to which they are not entitled. </p>
<p>A consumer could fraudulently claim they were entitled to a subsidy, when in fact their income was way too high. That is easy to detect; the IRS knows how much applicants make. </p>
<p>An applicant could also fraudulently (or mistakenly) claim they were entitled to a subsidy, when in fact their employer offers them qualifying health insurance so they are not entitled to a subsidy. This sort of fraud/mistake can be easily ruled out in many cases. If the applicant’s employer doesn’t offer qualifying insurance to anyone, which is easy to check, then a fortiori the employer can’t be offering qualified insurance to this employee. </p>
<p>So it should be easy to figure out which applicants need further scrutiny: the small number of applicants who claim subsidies, and who work for employers who offer qualifying insurance to some employees. </p>
<p>Verifying that consumers are entitled to the subsidies they are claiming does not seem to me to be a partisan issue. Nobody likes cheaters.</p>
<p>I read today that one of the funky issues is that transactions on the exchange aren’t time stamped, so there are some consumers who are clicking around and actually enrolling, unenrolling, enrolling again in order to gain information, but the insurance companies aren’t able to know which transaction is the final choice because of the way the information is being transmitted.</p>
<p>No, you wouldn’t think so but apparently income verification was a sticking point in this whole shutdown mess.</p>
<p>In my post #1714, my use of the phrase “sticking point” is not in reference to the government shut down, but simply meant to refer to the current problem area in ACA. The procedures in place do provide a means to verify applicant levels in most cases, but do not provide a good mechanism in the short term to verify whether or not applicants are eligible for employer-provided insurance. Those who are eligible for employer-provided insurance are generally not available for subsidies on the exchange, even if their income level would otherwise make them eligible. </p>
<p>The income verification problem was not a an issue connected to the shut down. Rather, it was one of the few issues that everyone could agree on.</p>
<p>Regarding plan choice, I spoke with a higher up at the federal exchange, you may choose any plan during open enrollment, if you pick a plan today and then realize you want a different plan, fine, UNTIL you pay, once you have paid your premium, even if open enrollment continues, then you cannot change.</p>
<p>Seems a little intense to me, especially this first year, but that is what they say. So, to anyone signing up now, don’t pay until required in order to have the flexibility to discover more info, like provider networks.</p>
<p>Has anyone been able to sign up yet?</p>
<p>Since our plan was cancelled and the closest private plan to what we used to have costs over 100% more, I decided to try to go on the exchange and see what it would be that way. </p>
<p>I spent hours and couldn’t get any prices. When I got close, I was kicked off. </p>
<p>Man does this annoy me. Remember the old bread lines in the USSR? Felt like that.</p>