Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Weird 404Care.gov Tricks

Working with a new (to me) client on an Exchange plan, husband and wife, $28,000 annual income (2020). Very vanilla, no real issues. Plug in their demographics, hit the button, and see that they qualify for a fairly substantial subsidy tax credit. The only 'off' thing is that the income is 100% from hubby (this comes into play in a moment).

So continue on to the quote screen, see that they can buy a $5,250 deductible HSA-compliant plan for about $50/month (total for the two of them, after applying $1,250 subsidy). Nice.

Yesterday, Suzy stopped in to pull the trigger, and we went to sign them up. We carefully went through each screen, and confirmed that we'd entered all the relevant personal info for both of them. But when we got to the "checkout lane," the premium had gone from $50 to almost $80, and - weirder still - it seemed to only list Suzy.

Hmmm.

So, we call the 404Care.gov hotline, and sure enough, they were only showing her as on the plan; keep in mind, we both saw me click the buttons to include hubby. Okay, no big deal, nice guy at the other end got us all hooked up, hubby added and, lo and behold, a miracle:

Instead of $80 for Suzy alone, it was $40 for the two of them.

And yeah, I'm thinking this, too.

Apparently the gummint also works in mysterious ways. How else to explain why it's half the cost to insure both of them?
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