WASHINGTON — Some 310,000 people with inconsistencies in their citizenship and immigration materials might lose their federal marketplace health coverage Sept. 30 unless they provide proper supporting documents by Sept. 5, the Obama administration announced Tuesday.
In May, the Department of Health and Human Services began contacting about 2 million people about discrepancies or errors in the personal information they’d provided in their insurance applications.
The problems stem, in part, from an administration policy that allowed applicants to self-report information about their incomes, citizenship and household size, all of which contribute to determining their eligibility for tax credits to help pay for coverage.
The self-reporting system was adopted because the federal marketplace technology to verify all applicant information wasn’t fully functional. For the first year of operation, the federal exchange used a scientific sampling process to weed out applications that understated household income.
