Health insurance companies want HHS to help incentivize healthy individuals to purchase health insurance quickly by instituting heftier fines and late-enrollment fees, according to a report by Politico.
The individual mandate of the healthcare law was included to help offset the increased cost to payors who will now have to cover riskier, costlier beneficiaries with pre-existing conditions. Health insurers worry that without healthier people paying in, premiums will skyrocket to cover sicker Americans once that part of the healthcare law goes into effect in 2014.
Individuals must acquire health insurance by the end of 2014 or pay a flat penalty tax of $95 or 1 percent of income. That tax is scheduled to grow to the greater of $695 or 2.5 percent of income by 2016, but insurance industry backers say the two years leading up to then need to prod healthy individuals into risk pools as soon as possible, rather than delaying health plan enrollment until they require it or the deadline arrives, according to the report.
Their recommendations include late fees or permanently increased premium rates for individuals who wait too long to enroll, similar to how Medicare currently penalizes seniors who wait to enroll too long after they turn 65.
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The individual mandate of the healthcare law was included to help offset the increased cost to payors who will now have to cover riskier, costlier beneficiaries with pre-existing conditions. Health insurers worry that without healthier people paying in, premiums will skyrocket to cover sicker Americans once that part of the healthcare law goes into effect in 2014.
Individuals must acquire health insurance by the end of 2014 or pay a flat penalty tax of $95 or 1 percent of income. That tax is scheduled to grow to the greater of $695 or 2.5 percent of income by 2016, but insurance industry backers say the two years leading up to then need to prod healthy individuals into risk pools as soon as possible, rather than delaying health plan enrollment until they require it or the deadline arrives, according to the report.
Their recommendations include late fees or permanently increased premium rates for individuals who wait too long to enroll, similar to how Medicare currently penalizes seniors who wait to enroll too long after they turn 65.
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