Some 200,000 Obamacare enrollees are about to be kicked off their insurance policies after they failed to confirm that they are legally living in the United States administration officials announced Thursday. Under the health law, people enrolled in exchange policies must be able to prove legal status.
Last summer, the administration announced that there were significant discrepancies in hundreds of thousands of Obamacare applications—specifically dealing with citizenship. Health officials sent out letters in August to about 300,000 enrollees with application discrepancies asking them to send in relevant documents to confirm their legal status and resolve the issue.
Related: Up to 300,000 Could Lose Obamacare on Federal Exchange
About 112,000 of those people never responded and got dropped from their plans in September.
The new wave of people responded to the administration, but didn’t provide sufficient evidence to conclude they legally reside in the United States.
Most of these people had been enrolled on policies for at least a year—and many of their plans were automatically renewed for this year. Officials said their coverage will be officially terminated on Feb 28.
The announcement came just as health officials are making their final push to enroll as many people as possible in health coverage through Obamacare’s state and federal exchanges before the Sunday deadline. Last week, officials said some 9.9 million people had selected policies on both the state and federal exchanges—that will be revised down once these plans are terminated.
Related: Thousands of Obamacare Enrollees to Lose Coverage
Most of these people received federal subsidies last year to make their coverage more affordable. It is unclear if the Internal Revenue Service will try to recoup that money.
Separately, the administration will be taking action to resolve other applicant discrepancies for people who listed incorrect information about their income on their application. This is important because enrollee income determines whether they qualify for federal subsidies, and how much they should receive.
The number of people getting kicked off their policies is likely to increase—since the administration’s figures only account for people who enrolled on the federal exchange. It does not include people with application discrepancies on the state run exchanges.
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