As someone who has gotten through the glitches and the bugs on healthcare.gov I have a message to the Senate who is hopefully negotiating a bill to be passed today.
NO INCOME VERIFICATION! Keep it out of the bill and send POTUS Obama a clean bill.
Dems ought to think twice about this income verification trap. It's not a good idea and not necessary as income verification is already built into the system.
Yes, when you apply for subsidies you have to give them your income. The IRS monitors the law and if you say your income is going to ba $XXX and get a subsidy for that and then report your income on your income taxes to be $YYYYY. The IRS is going to immediately catch that and address it. THERE ARE BIG MESSAGES ON THE TEMPLATE THAT WARN AGAINST PERJURY, BTW.
To do income verification UPFRONT will be too costly and too time consuming.
Remember millions of people are suppose to be using the subsidies to help them pay for the mandatory insurance many can't afford. If you do income verification up front, you will a)delay many people receiving insurance because there is no system set up to do the verification and b) it will make everything more expensive because you are essentially paying to do something twice. This is not necessary.
But the GOP believes that everyone that gets a subsidy is a liar. Well, let me tell you. Most poor people will not lie about this because they don't want to mess with the IRS. I am willing to bet there are more RICH LIARS out there cheating the IRS than there are poor.
Dems, PLEASE PASS ONLY A CLEAN BILL AND LEAVE ALL ASPECTS OF THE AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE ACT OUT OF THE BILL.
Please don't be ramrodded into including a stupid, costly and absolutely unnecessary appeasement to the GOP. They don't deserve it and it is not the right appeasement.
If you want to review income verification after it has been up and working for a year, that is acceptable. But right now, don't do it. You will a)be hurting millions of people, b) be overtaxing the IRS, c)calling poor people liars and d)giving into the GOP ransam demands.
Stand strong and do what is right! You have to because the GOP is hell bent on doing what is wrong for America and if YOU won't do what is right, then you are telling the country that neither party is willing to do the right thing for our country.
GOP SPOILER ALERT -- THIS NEW INCOME VERIFICATION PLOY OF THE GOP IS DESIGNED TO DELAY THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE! The plan is to bog down the IRS so they can't verify the 40 millions income in time for everyone to meet the deadline next year. When this happens, then they will HAVE TO DELAY the individual mandate. This is a trick. Don't fall for it!