6,600 in Az could lose ACA insurance over immigration status

Posted Aug 14, 2014

Dylan Smith
TucsonSentinel.com

Thousands of Arizona residents could lose health insurance coverage soon because they haven't cleared up their immigration status by providing documents requested by federal officials. Some 6,600 here are among 300,000 nationwide who will lose coverage next month if they don't respond.

Those receiving coverage under the plan on the Federal Health Insurance Marketplace must be citizens or legal residents. While federal officials said they have resolved about 450,000 cases in which there were inconsistencies in records, with another 210,000 cases being reviewed, there are still many people who have not responded to requests for information.

Officials said in a news release that they have "asked consumers five to seven times — via mail, phone and email — to submit their information."

"A citizenship or immigration data matching issue can happen when the information reported in a consumer’s application, such as a Social Security or Permanent Resident Card number, is incomplete or different than the information the government has on file," said a spokesman.

"A data inconsistency does not necessarily mean there is a problem with an individual’s eligibility for enrollment; it means that additional information is needed to verify the information provided in an application. However, if these supporting documents are not received, health insurance plans will be terminated in order to ensure program integrity and protect taxpayer dollars," said Jack Cheevers of the Department of Health and Human Services.

"In May, we had roughly 970,000 people with citizenship or immigration data-matching errors. Since then, we’ve closed about 450,000 of these cases and have an additional 210,000 cases in progress. We continue to receive up to 60,000 documents a day," Cheevers said.

Those who've been notified of a data matching issue must provide their documents to the feds by Sept. 5, or their insurance coverage will end by Sept. 30, he said.

Those who receive a letter should log into their HealthCare.gov account to upload documents, which can also be mailed.

"Consumers may also contact our call center at 1-800-318-2596 to see what documents they need to submit and see whether the Marketplace has received their information," Cheevers said.