14 DAY TRIAL // A glitch in the health reform system proposed by President Obama may yield advantages for young smokers until 2014.
Insurance companies can charge extra in premiums for smokers; however, those penalties are limited for a year’s time.
“In 2015 and beyond, the system will expand to allow issuers to increase this ratio, if they choose to do so,” Health and Human Services spokeswoman Joanne Peters describes.
The computer error is stalling insurance companies on upping smokers' premiums for about a year, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
“This is a temporary circumstance that in no way impacts our ability to open the [exchanges] on Oct. 1, when millions of Americans will be able to purchase quality, affordable insurance for the first time,” Peters says.
The system error has been documented in a report put out by Health and Human Services on June 28.
“Because of a system limitation ... the system currently cannot process a premium for a 65-year-old smoker that is ... more than three times the premium of a 21-year-old smoker,” the regulations state.
“The submission of the (insurer) will be rejected by the system,” the HHS document reads.
Insurers can ask for larger payments, but the paperwork will not be accepted in the national database. Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation explains that seniors who smoke have greater health problems than non-smokers.
“Generally a 20-year-old who smokes probably doesn't have much higher health costs than someone who doesn't smoke in any given year. [...] A 60-year-old is another story,” Levitt details.
Insurance companies will be able to ask smokers for 50 percent larger premiums starting in 2014.
That would bring a 64-year-old's annual contribution up to $13,600 (€10,630) if he or she smokes. That is far larger than the $9,000 (€7,035) a year a non-smoker of the same age would pay.