Obamacare Schadenfreude - More Shrinkage

Health Coverage to End Without Proof of Citizenship or Legal Residency

The Obama administration moved Tuesday to cut off health insurance for up to 310,000 people who signed up through the HealthCare.gov system unless they can provide documents in the next few weeks showing they are U.S. citizens or legal residents.

Those individuals have until Sept. 5 to send in additional information that could confirm they are in the U.S. legally, a condition of using the online insurance exchanges to obtain coverage.

Officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers the 2010 Affordable Care Act, said they would tell insurers to terminate health policies for people who don't respond, starting Sept. 30.

Hmm, I thought they weren't supposed to be able to sign up in the first place.

Immigration status has been one of the most politically charged aspects of the law. During congressional debate, supporters added a provision banning people living in the U.S. without authorization from using the exchanges to buy coverage and from receiving tax credits that many lower-income Americans and legal residents can get.

Some immigration activists grudgingly accepted the restriction as necessary to maintain support for the legislation, but said it was spiteful to prohibit people from using the site entirely.

At the same time, Republicans critical of the law said they didn't believe the federal government was capable of preventing widespread fraud and have pointed to the data problems as proof of their predictions.

A reasonable suspicion, then, that there are far more than 300k and many will slips by, or whether Obama waives the requirement in his awaited update of immigration law by fiat.

I couldn’t keep the health insurance plan I liked either

He’s been called by Stu Rothenberg perhaps the “best GOP challenger in the country,”running a toss-up race in a purple state. His latest ad goes straight to the issue of the perpetual voter concern—whether Gardner “cares about people like me.” Turns out he lost his health insurance plan in the Obamacare fall-out, as he informs the many Coloradans who are in the same situation:

The GOP needs to run on Obamacare full time.