Applying For Obamacare Could Be As Fun As Doing Taxes

ObamaCare gets more and more fun as each day passes (via Hot Air)

(AP) Applying for benefits under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul could be as daunting as doing your taxes.

The government’s draft application runs 15 pages for a three-person family. An outline of the online version has 21 steps, some with additional questions.

Seven months before the Oct. 1 start of enrollment season for millions of uninsured Americans, the idea that getting health insurance could be as easy as shopping online at Amazon or Travelocity is starting to look like wishful thinking.

At least three major federal agencies, including the IRS, will scrutinize your application. Checking your identity, income and citizenship is supposed to happen in real time, if you apply online.

Sounds fun and exciting! Who doesn’t like filling out lots and lots of forms? Oh, um

That’s just the first part of the process, which lets you know if you qualify for financial help. The government asks to see what you’re making because Obama’s Affordable Care Act is means-tested, with lower-income people getting the most generous help to pay premiums.

At that point, if you qualify, then you have to actually pick an insurance plan. And understand insurance jargon. Fortunately, like doing taxes, it’s not an option (unless you work for Obama and the federal government). You are required to have health insurance, as you remember. It’s apparently so intensive that Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a big time backer of Obamacare, has a recommendation

“When you combine those two processes, it is enormously time consuming and complex,” added Pollack. He’s calling for the government to simplify the form and, more important, for an army of counselors to help uninsured people navigate the new system. It’s unclear who would pay for these navigators.

If you’re talking about needing an “army of counselors” to fill out a form to see if you even qualify, the process is unbelievably difficult.

Then there’s this

Does anyone even know what all these regulations are and mean? Including the people who wrote them?

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

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