More than 400,000 lose health insurance

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

A change in government procedures has led to a big jump in people losing coverage under President Barack Obama’s health care law because of immigration and citizenship issues.

More than 400,000 had their insurance canceled, nearly four times as many as last year.

The Obama administration says it is following the letter of the law, and this year that means a shorter time frame for resolving immigration and citizenship issues. But advocates say the administration’s system for verifying eligibility is seriously flawed, and consumers who are legally entitled to benefits are paying the price.

“Same dog, different collar,” said Jane Delgado, president of the National Alliance for Hispanic Health, evoking an old Spanish saying about situations that do not seem to change. “The bottom line is, people got taken off health insurance when they applied in good faith.”

The National Immigration Law Center says it believes the overwhelming majority of the 423,000 people whose coverage was terminated are legal U.S. residents and citizens snared in a complicated, inefficient system for checking documents.

Angel Padilla, the center’s health-policy analyst, said it defies common sense that that many immigrants without legal authorization to be in the country would risk alerting a federal agency by applying for taxpayer-subsidized benefits.

“Somebody who is trying to submit documents over and over ... is someone who believes they have an eligible immigration status,” Padilla said. By comparison, a total of 109,000 people lost coverage because of citizenship and immigration issues during all of 2014.

Obama’s health care law specifies that only citizens and legal U.S. residents are entitled to coverage through the new insurance markets that offer subsidized policies.

The administration says this year the law provides just a 95-day window for resolving documentation issues that involve citizenship and immigration. There was no such clock in 2014 because it was the first year of HealthCare.gov’s coverage expansion.