No, I'm not a straggler.
I applied for my ACA account before the marketplace even opened, though it was then lost in the digital abyss.
I then applied for a new account when the marketplace opened, but the site glitched and crashed.
I tried to apply for a policy throughout the painful "fixing" period of the website, but no dice.
I ended up having to apply for a new account, finished my application over the phone, and got my insurance to start on 01/01.
But that's a story for another day.
This is about my experience on signing my parents up on the health insurance exchange, on the final week of open enrollment period, and how I would give the "OMG ANOTHER OBUMMERCARE EXTENSIONZZZZZZZZzzzzzz" crowd the middle finger since it's absolutely necessary and proper to have such an extension.
Follow me below to read Part I of the whole story...
I was never planning on signing my parents up for health insurance on the exchange.
This is partly because of my mother having a job at a public university, and having a pretty decent health insurance through her job (the university, Auburn University, has a self-insured group plan that's administered/managed by BSBCAL). While she doesn't get a free colonoscopy, it's pretty affordable, with doctor's visits, along with numerous other services, being copay-based that doesn't involve deductible at all.
My dad is a university professor in Taiwan, and he spends about 3~6 months in the US every year to keep his Green Card (as well as part of his job being a visiting professor during those months). Obviously, he needs his health insurance, and sure enough, he's been on my mother's health insurance since she started working there 14 years ago.
Until a year and half ago.
You see, Auburn University has a 3-bracket system on how your yearly salary will determine how much premium you'd pay. My mother was previously in the lowest bracket, but her gradual raise finally pushed her into the second bracket, making her premium jump by about $140/month. She literally had to lower her contribution to her 403(b) (HINT This will come back later) in order to be able to pay for her premium.
That was when she made a decision to drop my dad (and my little brother, who had 1 more year of eligibility on her policy, but who was also leaving to study in NM for his PhD).
She managed to save some money, but the end result was my dad and my little brother being without insurance for the first time in their life. (Though, I must add, that my dad still has insurance when he's in Taiwan, through the Single-Payer system they have going on over there).
She was originally planning on adding my dad back during the open enrollment to her university health policy later this year (also in November), but found out that she'd still need to pay a fine for my dad not having an insurance in 2014. We were planning on asking for exemption through the fact that my dad would be in Taiwan for the most part, and that he'd be retiring (losing his job) when he comes to the US in August.
However, when I called the call center in February to inquire on this matter, I found out that there's no mechanism in place, at this time, to report a life change. I also found out that IRS won't be able to deal with this issue until later this year, when they figure out how to collect the penalty and everything.
So, she' stuck without any apparently good solution.
Being the idiot I am, I didn't realize that:
1. healthcare.gov had several major changes since late December, when I last tried to sign someone up for insurance. One of the key addition was the ability to preview possible subsidies in the "window-shopping" phase.
2. I failed to realize was that, while the MAGI, which is used in the calculation for subsidy, requires you to add back any IRA deduction amount to your AGI, 401(k) and 403(b) contributions will stay! That means my mother's reported income for the year of 2014 will be a bit more than $16,000! (Which is roughly the magic number for my dad to qualify for purchasing on exchange, with Alabama not expanding Medicaid and everything).
3. Finally, I didn't do enough research to find out about the 9.5% rule, which states that if an employer's coverage for single person exceeds 9.5% the yearly household income, the employee is qualified to purchase insurance through the marketplace. And, lo and behold, $141.53 is greater than $129.87!
So, after a few family video conferences via Skype, we finally reached the decision of applying for exchange plans for both of my parents and dropping my mom's employer health insurance altogether.
The hard part is over, right?
WRONG!
And I'll tell you why, in the second part of the story...