Thousands of Floridians could soon lose their federally-purchased health insurance if they don’t submit information to the government verifying their citizenship status.
Nearly 94,000 Floridians still haven’t submitted documents verifying whether they’re eligible to purchase health insurance in the federal marketplace. Many of those with outstanding paperwork could be undocumented immigrants who weren’t eligible to purchase the federally-subsidized plans in the first place. But Renard Murray, regional director for the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, says U.S. citizens are impacted too. For example someone who is married.
“The married name is different from what’s on the birth certificate or social security administration—there’s a name discrepancy there. So a person born in the U.S. with a name difference could be an issue as well."
CMS has sent out more than 250,000 follow-up letters nationwide to customers asking again for the documents. The number has dropped from a million people nationwide when the discrepancies emerged several weeks ago. The deadline to submit the paperwork is September 5. If nothing is received people could be dropped from their health insurance at the end of September and will have to wait until November to re-enroll.
