President Obama is paying only secondary attention to the problem 1 million Obamacare patients receiving botched tax forms.
His administration is instead focusing its immediate attention on getting more people to sign up during the recently-conceived special enrollment period.
Kevin Counihan, CEO of healthcare.gov, declined to say Friday when all Obamacare patients would be sent correct tax forms.
“We are tracking to get those corrected forms out on time,” he said, but “being a couple of days away, our real focus right now is to build awareness of the special enrollment period.”
The special enrollment period for the 37 states covered by healthcare.gov lasts from March 15 to April 30. It is only open to those who face the individual mandate’s penalty but claim they didn’t know about it until they filed their tax returns.
Andy Slavitt, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, rejected the notion that none of the forms were created.
Last month, the administration admitted that it sent inaccurate tax forms to 820,000 people who got health insurance from Obamacare.
The tax form 1095-A is used to determine whether a taxpayer is eligible for tax credits.
The incorrect form was sent to purchasers of the second-cheapest silver plan, one of three plan options available under the healthcare marketplace. The form had a box that incorrectly generated the amount of tax credits a person should receive.
Of that 820,000, about 50,000 have already filed their tax returns and received either more or less subsidies than they should have. The Treasury Department has said that customers who received more subsidies won’t have to give any money back, but those that received less will have to file new returns.
Several state-run exchanges have decided to follow healthcare.gov’s lead. Of the 14 state-run exchanges, 11 decided to hold their own special enrollment period until after Tax Day on April 15.
Even if someone signs up on March 15, they will likely still have to pay a small portion of the 2015 penalty, which is $325 per person or 2 percent of yearly income, whichever is highest.
The penalties are pro-rated. If someone signs up on the 15th day of the month, coverage begins on the first day of the following month.
If they get insurance on April 1, an insured person will still have to pay one fourth of the annual penalty, Stan Dorn, senior fellow with the Urban Institute, told the Washington Examiner.
That person is already on the hook for the 2014 penalty, which is $95 or one percent of household income. The 2016 fee goes up again, with 2.5 percent of income or $695 per person.
