On Tuesday, the Obama administration set the deadline of Sept 5th for 310,000 Obamacare recipients to provide proof of citizenship or legal residency. If they don’t, they will be cut off from the program.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, the hundreds of thousands allowed to enroll in and benefit from Obamacare without having proven their legal status in the country traces back to the systemic flaws of Healthcare.gov:
CMS and its contractors are still trying to dig out from technological flaws with HealthCare.gov. Millions of users had difficulties using the site to shop for insurance when it launched last fall, but deeper problems remain within the system, including the ability to use databases held by various federal agencies to check people's eligibility for coverage.
Federal officials have said the application system wasn't able to determine citizenship and immigration status for almost one million people of the 5.4 million who had obtained plans through HealthCare.gov by the time the main enrollment period closed in mid-April, because the information in their application didn't match the data the federal government had on file.
Of course, immigration status was a critical sticking point in the debates surrounding the crafting and passage of Obamacare. Without restrictions on the law’s application according to citizenship or residency status, the bill would never have passed.
Many Republicans argued then that even with the immigration restrictions, the federal government would not be able to effectively enforce the law and widespread fraud would result. The massive problems with the online exchange and the system’s inability to accurately track the status of nearly one-fifth of those enrolled seem to only validate their concerns.
CMS officials reported that 970,000 people were enrolled in Obamacare with outstanding "inconsistencies" in their records. Though 450,000 of those cases have supposedly been resolved, thus far 210,000 have responded but not yet provided sufficient data, while 310,000 have not responded at all.
Image Joe Raedle/Getty Images.