Pre-Obamcare private insurance, parents just notify the health plan. Insurers will still cover new babies. HealthCare.gov website can't handle such updates. In other words under the President's signature legislation its hard to cover new babies, but easy to get abortion coverage to kill babies.
It's a reminder that the new coverage for many uninsured Americans comes with a third party in the mix: the feds. And the system's wiring for some vital federal functions isn't yet fully connected.The Administration is claiming over 2 million Americans have signed up for Obamacare, but that is not a real number since they are counting people who have indicated they want to purchase a particular policy whether or not they have ponied up the dollars to pay for it.
It's not just having a new baby that could create bureaucratic hassles, but other life changes affecting a consumer's taxpayer-subsidized premiums. The list includes marriage and divorce, a death in the family, a new job or a change in income, even moving to a different community.
Such changes affect financial assistance available under the law, so the government has to be brought into the loop.
Insurers say computerized "change in circumstance" updates to deal with family and life developments were supposed to have been part of the federal system from the start.
But that feature got postponed as the government scrambled to fix technical problems that overwhelmed the health care website during its first couple of months.
"It's just another example of 'We'll fix that later,'" said Bob Laszewski, an industry consultant who said he's gotten complaints from several insurer clients. "This needed to be done well before January. It's sort of a fly-by-night approach."
"We are currently working with insurers to find ways to make changing coverage easier while we develop an automated way for consumers to update their coverage directly," responded an administration spokesman, Aaron Albright.This is just one more example of how the President's start Obamacare at all costs policy has complicated the lives of Americans.
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