Clare37

I’m a US permanent resident. I started my own business last year after being laid off in July 2013 from the job I’d been in for five years. I am not yet making enough money to afford health insurance without government tax rebates. I did purchase health insurance using HealthCare.Gov last year and things went okay … that is, until the end of the year, when their system made a number of errors, and I was incorrectly billed by Humana for the full premium. I managed to get myself out of that mess by contacting some top officials at Humana, and they agreed to not bill me. This was really something that should have been taken care of by Healthcare.gov, but it was virtually impossible in my case to get the situation rectified.

Anyway, because of the bad experience, I'm not keen on purchasing health insurance using HealthCare.gov. However, I don’t have enough funds right now to purchase it privately. I understand that I would have to pay a fine if I don’t purchase health insurance. I wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t be breaching any special permanent resident rules by not paying for health insurance right now, and just paying the fine. For US citizens, it sounds like it’s no big deal if you don’t pay the insurance and pay the fine. Is this the case for Green card holders as well?

SanDiegogirl

The following applies to citizens and permanent residents:

If you don’t have coverage in 2015, you’ll pay the higher of these two amounts:

2% of your yearly household income. (Only the amount of income above the tax filing threshold, about $10,000 for an individual, is used to calculate the penalty.) The maximum penalty is the national average premium for a bronze plan.
$325 per person for the year ($162.50 per child under 18). The maximum penalty per family using this method is $975.

If you don't have funds to pay for private insurance, how are you going to pay for any medical bills you might encounter? What about a serious illness which lands you in the hospital?

So you had a bad experience with health.gov - better that than a 20K bill for something.

scrubbedexpat099

Not an issue, you will not lose your PR.

Need to check buy I thought they could only take a penalty from money they owed you.

username.exe

How about going via a broker? It might end up costing a little more, but they should be doing the legwork for you (in theory making the transaction efficient).

I just purchased a plan through Healthcare.gov, but my sister-in-law swears by a broker she uses who also has access to the marketplace.

sir_eccles

To clarify healthcare.gov is not responsible for humana's billing problems. Healthcare.gov is merely a marketplace to enable you to purchase insurance from a variety of private insurers and potentially receive a government subsidy.

Open enrollment ends today.

kins

How will you pay any large medical bills without health insurance?

jeepster

At the hospital tell 'em you're paying cash. When they show you the bill talk it down and say you can't afford all that. After they reduce the bill to something more manageable go on a payment plan which may be less than carrying insurance.

The problem with the American health care system is who pays and how much.

Giantaxe

Fine if you have no assets; not so fine of you do.

The OP is was getting subsidized insurance and is now choosing to ignore the mandate, all for what may have been an insurer's billing error. So although I have sympathy with that view, I do find it hard to have much sympathy for the OP.

jeepster

I have two kids and I was umemployed when they were born. Both deliveries had complications. One was a caesarian. I went on the payment plan, the world didn't end.

The reason why insurance is so costly in this country is because of those who don't pay. Health care is available, the problem is who pays and how much. Granted if one can afford health insurance by all means my recommendation is to get it, but I wouldn't fret if one goes through a bit of time without it. One just has to know how to navigate the health care system.

scrubbedexpat099

Reminds me of a thread elsewhere, basically being asked for grandmother in her 80s came here decade ago shall we say not the normal route.

Seems she has grandchildren etc all here but now has more and more health issues. The question was about Medicare particularly home help, wondered about how regular health costs were taken care of but the only comment was that she got it through some state programme.

Often seems to come up elsewhere, parents coming from third world countries with certainly no money to pay for Obamacare, question of perspective I guess, where there is a will there is a way and if you have nothing then debt collectors are not a major worry.

Giantaxe

Absent knowing what assets you had at the time, that comment is a bit of a non-sequiter to mine.

So you acknowledge that the problem is "because of those that don't pay" but then recommend a route where people may very well not pay, or pay little. Er, ok.

If "you have nothing" in terms of assets, I agree. That is why the ACA has a mandate, albeit a half-assed one.

scrubbedexpat099

It is a bit more complicated than that. This lady had no obvious route to adjust, no qualifying relatives for a waiver. So was outside the ACA and also no tax issues, not that it would likely be an issue anyway.

But let us say she was a new legal immigrant, OCare would be 15 grand plus plus, x 2 if there are 2 of them.

Most sponsors of elderly parents I have come across are clearly not in the being able to find that sort of cost

scrubbedexpat099

She will most likely get DAPA.

kins

How much was the final bill? How long did it take to pay off?

Michael

Often since county hospitals have to treat the uninsured or under insured and often get little or nothing for their services, they are normally the easiest to negotiate a price with. Some will be upfront and indicate a price of 10%-20% of the cost if their services are needed.