Upon reflection, them’s the breaks. No employer healthcare, pay $36/month for subsidized ACA plan. If you get employer healthcare, pay $125/month for that. There are many “glitches” in the system. This one is not nearly as bad as: Earn $12,000 per year and you are eligible for $338/month subsidy, but earn $11,500 per year and you are not eligible for a subsidy (and no Medicaid here).
I thought that if you are eligible for employee health insuarance you cannot get a subsidized ACA plan? Is that not the case?
If a person is eligible for an employer-supplied health care plan, and they don’t sign up, they are not eligible for subsidies. There is no “My employer would supply health care for me but I want the taxpayers to pay instead” exemption. If he’s eligible to sign up for the employer plan in January, he can’t get the subsidies in February.
^^Right. And it would all get caught up when the employer files Form 1095 showing that son was eligible for coverage.
The employer health insurance has to be affordable for the employee (there is a standard for that). If it isn’t, the employee can go on the exchange. See
http://obamacarefacts.com/affordable-employer-sponsored-coverage/ .
@NJres , Life is not that simple. Even if you are elidgable for employer based insurance, you might still be eligable to buy on the exchange with a subsidy. I do not pretend to understand the rules. I am suggesting you look at the instructions for 8962. From 2015 IRS instructions for form 8962:
"Eligibility for minimum essential coverage. In most cases you are considered eligible for minimum essential coverage if the coverage is available to you, whether or not you enroll in it. However, special rules apply to certain types of minimum essential coverage as shown below.
Employer-sponsored coverage. Even if you and other members of your tax family had the opportunity to enroll in
coverage offered by your employer for 2015, you are considered eligible for employer-sponsored coverage for a month only if the offer of coverage met a minimum standard of affordability and provided a minimum level of benefits, referred to as “minimum value.” The coverage offered by your employer is generally considered affordable for you and the members of your tax family allowed to enroll in the coverage if your share of the annual premiums for self-only coverage is not more than 9.56% of your household income for 2015. "
So if I read this right, your son might be eligible for a subsidy even if the his employer offers a plan if it is not affordable based on the above. In his case, 12000*.0956/12 is $96.56 so the monthly cost of 135 is not considered affordable. However I am not a tax accountant so I could be totally wrong.
I wish that ACA was not so complicated! There are so many in and outs that trying to fully understand the rules is tough. Maybe, I am just too dense.
We got a bridge policy for January. It’s about half the price of a regular month’s premium. We would be happy with just that coverage, but of course it’s not good enough for Obama care, so we can’t use it regularly. 
We could pay for a lot of medical coverage with the $600/month savings.