Playing around with the ACA calculator looks like I can enter $0 for income and qualify for medicaid. I only need 7 months before medicaire kicks in. I have plenty of cash to draw down the next 7 months. Am I reading this right that I could basically qualify for medicaid by showing $0 income?
ACA or medicaid for showing $0 income
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RetiredHappy
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Yes. But they will ask you for proof as to why your income is dropping to 0.
RetiredAt55.5
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I thought you had to estimate your income for the entire year when applying for ACA insurance, even if you'll only need insurance for part of the year.
And at tax time, you'd settle up based on whatever the yearly income ends up being, and how many months you actually got insurance and subsidy money.
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EastWest Gal
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You have no after tax investments at all earning dividends? No rebalancing which will generate capital gains?
Our state is using our estimate from last year’s application and has decided that our premium is $0.00. I’ve decided not to correct it and just up our quarterly tax payments to cover a premium of roughly $300, which will cover any equities we sell for expenses and a small Roth conversion. DS is also on the ACA. His premium next year is $1.71/month. He has a silver cost sharing plan and we are on a bronze plan.
I strongly advise against going on Medicaid. Medicaid has more severe limitations on what they cover, including a restrictive formulary. Many private physicians do not accept Medicaid. In our area, most private physicians do not accept Medicaid or have extremely limited numbers of Medicaid patients. And finding a specialist? Forget it.
Report enough income to stay off Medicaid but have a low premium.
Our state is using our estimate from last year’s application and has decided that our premium is $0.00. I’ve decided not to correct it and just up our quarterly tax payments to cover a premium of roughly $300, which will cover any equities we sell for expenses and a small Roth conversion. DS is also on the ACA. His premium next year is $1.71/month. He has a silver cost sharing plan and we are on a bronze plan.
I strongly advise against going on Medicaid. Medicaid has more severe limitations on what they cover, including a restrictive formulary. Many private physicians do not accept Medicaid. In our area, most private physicians do not accept Medicaid or have extremely limited numbers of Medicaid patients. And finding a specialist? Forget it.
Report enough income to stay off Medicaid but have a low premium.
ShokWaveRider
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This year it is ~$17,500 in Florida where we are. If I had Zero income I would either convert to Roth to get it, or simply transfer some IRA gains to cash.
If you estimate just over FPL for income, you should have some no / low cost policies available.
https://www.healthcare.gov/see-plans/#/
Murf
https://www.healthcare.gov/see-plans/#/
Murf
Doesn't medicaid take your networth into consideration?
Fermion
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No. Elon could get medicaid if he desired.
RetiredHappy
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Only if Elon makes no money from his employment, interests and dividends.
Fermion
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He paid zero taxes in 2018, most of his money is in Tesla which doesn't pay a dividend. It is possible that in 2018 he could have qualified for Medicaid if he was not covered by a health care policy from Tesla. I know he doesn't take a salary from there, or didn't. Not sure if he takes one from SpaceX.
It was mostly a joke but can you imagine the outrage if someone like that did get on Medicaid just to show the flaws in our system?
Elon just exercised and sold over $1B in stock. That’s all taxable income, folks, so he’ll not be applying for Medicaid anytime soon.
Dtail
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Same here. Don't want to depend on doctor's acceptance of Medicaid.
Fermion
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A lot more than that, I think he said he is paying $11B in tax this year alone.
Thanks for the help!
Thanks. I would only have a plan for 7 months so I assume they look at the income during the plan period and not the whole calendar year. Will need to check it out.
SecondCor521
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Nope. As someone else already mentioned, ACA is based on your estimated AGI for the full calendar year. Even so, since you have that much cash, you may be able to achieve a pretty low targeted AGI and get an ACA plan for nearly nothing.
That being said, Medicaid is based on monthly income (and I think it's the month or two immediately before you apply). So if you wanted to do that, then you probably could qualify after having a short period of no income. I'm not clear on how it works to have coverage during that month or two, though - if being covered is super important to you, that's something I'd look into.
EastWest Gal
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It might be helpful for the OP to place a call to his state exchange. I found both healthcare.gov in 2015 and my state exchange (new last year) very helpful in answering my questions.
This is probably a common question for them.
This is probably a common question for them.
Most Medicaid plans now are managed care orgs with a predefined network of Providers. I was lucky all my docs from work are in these plans, they take multiple insurances and plans. I never had an issue and it is excellent coverage.
GTFan
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Again, YMMV. You might have great coverage but in MANY states (like mine) you definitely don't want to be on Medicaid.
