Posted on 11/10/2013 6:59:46 AM PST by Hojczyk
Tucked inside nearly 11,000 pages of the Affordable Care Act is a little-known provision that doles out three months of free health care to individuals who choose to default on their premiums
.People who receive the federal subsidy to be part of Obamacare will be allowed to incur a three-month “grace period” if they can’t pay their premiums and then simply cancel their policies, stiffing the doctors and hospitals.
Their only repercussion is that they have to wait until the following year’s open enrollment if they want coverage on the exchange.
“It will help break the system,” said Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, one of a core group of Republicans who oppose Obamacare. “This is a huge piece of evidence to show this can’t work, you will break the system and bankrupt people involved.
“The hospitals, doctors and insurance companies will be left holding the bag. There will be disagreements over who will pay for what. Lawyers will get involved because we are talking about a lot of money,” he said.
Under Section 156.270 of the Affordable Care Act, the insured needs to pay a premium for just one month before qualifying for the three-month grace period. The insurance company must pay the claims during the first month of the grace period; during the second and third month doctors and hospitals are left to collect unpaid bills.
This loophole wasn’t lost on some unnamed individuals who queried the Department of Health and Human Services during an open comment period for the new law in 2011.
“HHS will continue to explore options for incentivizing appropriate use of the grace period,” the register said. “HHS will monitor this issue moving forward and will continue to work on the development of policies to prevent misuse of the grace period.”
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
If you have to pass it to find out what’s in it it is a stool sample.
So all they have to do is sign up for coverage every time something really bad happens and then cancel. The only risk is if they get another really bad problem before the next open enrollment period. If nothing else Obamacare will teach people how to be risk managers.
Nicely played!!
THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF THE THING.
In fact, everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - that the Executive Branch is doing now, and for the foreseeable future, is just to burn bridges to the past. The individual insurance market is already ruined, and cannot be revived unless the PPACA is repealed in the next 6 weeks. The reason the ruination of the employer-provided insurance market was delayed a year was to get through the elections in 2014 without a revolt. By January 2015, it will be impossible to resurrect group insurance without the Obamacare income transfers (which are massive - costs to a family of 4 may be in excess of $20 000/year).
I wrote the following in October 2010:
Naturally, the law popularly known as "Obamacare" is having a destructive effect on our existing health care system, since it was designed to destroy it. It is functioning exactly as intended.
The first effect, already apparent, is to cause all private investment in future projects, from hospital construction to industrial design, from drug development to conceptual research, to cease. In the eyes of Obamunists, this is a good thing, because all of that private investment is seeking "profit", and since white man's greed runs a world in need, profit must be abolished.
The drying up of investment is producing the predictable, second effect, which is to decrease hiring and increase layoffs. Healthcare executives are becoming convinced that next year will be worse than last year, and so on, and so on, ad infinitum, so all health care businesses are contracting.
Thirdly, insurance companies that plan to stay in business are increasing their premiums in anticipation of increased regulation (cost of compliance), increased taxation, punitive surcharges, and decreased customer bases.
Fourth, employers who are able are already dropping or restricting coverage.
Fifth, prospective physicians who might have considered the already difficult pathway of primary care practice are changing career paths, or seeking government employment. A private primary care doctor works 55-65 hours a week, government employees work 37.5. This will drastically increase the already severe shortages in this sector.
Sixth, the FDA, for the first time in history, has begun to revoke approval of already-existing drugs because of their cost. The first victims of this will be independent Oncology practices, whose existence depends on revenue from cutting-edge chemotherapy, but other sectors are sure to follow - not to mention the effects on patients who need new treatments (and whose tax dollars have already paid for the development of some of those treatments).
As I have written before, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was a work of purely Leninist destruction. Its sole purpose was, and is, to wreck what we have now in order to create conditions for a fully nationalized system.
As Emperor Palpatine says in Star Wars - Return of the Jedi, "Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen it". I am sure that is the view of Obama and his creators.
And...even if they pay the premiums the doctors and hospitals are going to be on the hook for co-pays and deductibles. The fact that these people have “insurance” is a joke.
The hospitals are treating the people anyway—through the ERs.
Plus, if you dump 30 million folks into a system without increasing the capacity of that system it will lead to huge problems.
Finally, if there is less “profit” for the doctors, who or what is going to pay their huge debts out of med school? There is no reason for an increase in doctors.
This whole thing is a disaster, waiting to happen.
…yep…and as your post points out…..totally unnecessary...
Courtesy of the California Medical Ass, here’s the exact procedure for lowering your overall yearly costs:
“The more nefarious insureds may take advantage of HHS-acknowledged opportunities to game the grace period and get 12 months of coverage for the price of nine before simply enrolling in a new plan under (Obamacare’s) guaranteed issue requirements,” wrote Association associate director C. Brett Johnson.
are we talking about the
...three month allowed coverage gap...
or something else?
A complete and total breakdown of the US healthcare system, followed by a communist-like takeover of all aspects of healthcare.
The US healthcare system got to be what it was with no help from the government. Now, with the government’s help, it will be a disaster. (but not for the ruling elite which will have everything it wants while we pay for it)
Obama’s war on doctors is just warming up...
Moral Hazard: It’s in there.
My hope is that ACA causes so many doctors and hospitals to drop out of 3rd-Party payer systems, accepting only cash, that we actually see the rise of a true free-market health-care system.
Sure. I wish I could sign up for home owners insurance only when my house is on fire or under water. Or disability insurance only after I am disabled.
The only way I see to beat Obamacare is to rob a bank, get convicted and let the State handle your health problems.
Beats nursing homes, hospitals and clinics. Costs nothing an they feed you to.
Get pregnant in Feb. Stop paying premium in Sept. Free delivery. Obamacare!
The single most amazing thing about the whole fiasco, as horrid as it is, is that SO MANY PEOPLE THOUGHT IT WAS INTENDED TO WORK. It seems to me that anyone with even the faintest understanding of reality could have gleaned enough information even from the pro-Obama reporting that dominated coverage of this disaster to realize that there is not even the slightest possibility that the people who created this monster ever had any kind of benign intent. The fact that so many believed the lie is terrifying to me, to know that the average American is as dense as a lead brick does not make me feel good at all. Worse yet, I have been made to realize that members of my own family who seemed to be reasonably intelligent were taken in by this monstrous lie.
If premiums are subsidized, did the government ever think about “who” will pay the copay? The “insured” will just claim he/she has no money and walk away. Good luck with that. That’s why Medicaid nationwide is such a screaming success and healthcare for free is going broke.
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