Romneycare turns ten; work remains

By Deval who then proceeded to spend upwards of a $1B on a website to meet new Federal state participation guidelines.

I had good , affordable employer sponsored care prior to this switch. Deval not advocating on our States behalf for a waiver from the ACA was a travesty and a blatant lack of leadership.

Still a contender.

That's not all. Broken? Yes.

After filing a tax return for a young single relative online using TurboTax, and the 1040-EZ, it seemed like a slam dunk. Not so said the IRS when the letter came.

After several calls to the IRS and the Health Connector and MassHealth I figured the TurboTax system didn't carry over everything correctly, so a follow-up has to be sent to the IRS. I asked for copies of everything to start over.

Then what came still didn't look right. More calls to the IRS, Health Connector, and MassHealth. None of the documents from the two health services matched or agreed. Each told me on the phone they are right and the other guy is wrong.

Finally a decent person from the MassHealth "determining" office got us on a 3-way call with the Health Connector and explained what was wrong on their end. Short answer, those little health coverage check boxes on the 1099 and 1095 series cannot overlap! You had either one or the other. Of course the chap we had on the 3-way was powerless to do anything so all he could do was file a support ticket for things to be looked at and amended.

The original taxes were filed online back in February, and here we are mid-April and it is still hanging and blowing in the wind.

As with any computerized system, "garbage in, garbage out."

One thing we did learn... while you maybe getting letters from state subsidized health plans, do not confuse MassHealth (zero co-pay) coverage with a Health Connector "zero co-pay" plan. Most people won't care because they have coverage and don't pay anything on either.

However, a Health Connector zero co-pay it seems contributes differently. And at teh end fo the year when you do taxes, you have special forms. The contribution you get from the state factors against any tax credits or standard deductions you may have and will impact your taxable income, which in turn reduces any refund.

In fact part of our problem is/was that the Health Connector over-contributed in most months and the difference has to come back from somewhere? And in this case from this young fellow's tax return refund.

As calculated and that based on THEIR mistakes, he was getting back about $1000. As of today's estimate (we are still waiting and guessing) that could be cut in half.

The IRS told us that they have had THOUSANDS of people having similar problems, and they cannot do anything to help since the problems are with the data associated with the returns themselves.

I have to wonder when this story will break the news. We are not alone in this mess.

Silver lining? Well, this kid got his state return already and they didn't see any problems with things on their end.

Of course that could be a lit fuse sparkling just out of sight.

A little tube of medicine that CVS wants about $350 for, a friend over-seas can get for $60. Same brand, same item.

So for $60 + $25 shipping, it should be $85 here.

But I believe we cut a deal with Big Pharma that we can't import medicine, right? Certainly more work to be done.

The Globe picked two members of the right wing Pioneer Institute to talk about RomneyCare, and Surprise, it said Romneys vision was great, but Patrick and the democrats ruined his perfect plan. Now that Boston has two Republican Papers, the Globe (businessman's republican: how can Boston serve the suburbs best and how can taxpayers serve business interests) and the Herald (the trump/Tea Party Republican: immigrants and minorities are ruining the country), what are the rest of us supposed to read?