One more Obamacare snafu
by CalWatchdog Staff | May 23, 2013 11:54 am
May 23, 2013
By Katy Grimes
[1]
There is yet one more snafu in the Obamacare health care law[2] — paying for it.
The new federal health law, going into effect January 1, 2014, requires most Americans to carry health insurance. But this presents a challenge for the large number of “unbankable” Americans.
Most health plans accept a credit card for the first month’s premium payment and then require customers to pay monthly with a check or an electronic funds transfer from a checking account.
Those options won’t work for the “unbankables,” people who do not maintain a checking or savings account in a bank.
Kaiser Health News[3] reports:
For ordinary Americans deemed unbankable, those who don’t have a traditional checking or savings account, it can be hard to simply pay bills. And that is about to become a big problem for those who also lack health coverage — and for the health insurance companies trying to sell them coverage. After all, how do you sell a product to a customer who has no way to pay you?
According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation[4], one in five households in the United States, or about 51 million adults have only a tenuous relationship with a traditional bank, relying instead on check-cashing stores and money lenders.
No federal health laws including the Affordable Care Act, require health insurers to accept all forms of payment, including credit cards or the cash-loaded, pre-paid debit cards that people without bank accounts often rely on.
Not only is the payment issue gong to be a problem, can you imagine a person with no bank account trying to fill out what will be more than 60 screens on a computer application for the family?
This is just more evidence of the negligent haste under which the Obamacare law was passed — your tax dollars at work.
- [Image]: http://www.calwatchdog.com/2013/04/14/now-media-notice-obamacare-worsens-ca-physician-shortage/new-york-post-obamacare/
- Obamacare health care law: http://www.healthcare.gov/law/
- Kaiser Health News: http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2013/May/20/insurance-marketplaces-bank-account-cash-unbanked.aspx
- According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation: http://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/2012_unbankedreport.pdf
Source URL: https://calwatchdog.com/2013/05/23/one-more-obamacare-snafu/