You’re kidding, right?

My lunch was extremely spicy today! It was the result of talking with my husband over the insanity of the Healthcare Marketplace that resulted in my needing multiple glasses of water and a Prilosec chaser! I suggest if you are upset about something you don’t discuss it while shaking Louisiana Pepper Sauce over your entree, if one properly calls leftovers an entree.

I believe Obamacare to be a fiasco of proportions that only the federal government can manage. Obamacare eliminated the exclusions for pre-existing conditions. Good! That needed to be done. So what else? I’ve got nothing! 10,535 pages of legislation and that’s all we got? What am I missing? I’m missing the affordability in the Affordable Healthcare Act. But that isn’t what I’m writing about today. I’m writing about my lunch!

My husband and I have embarked on a huge course change in our lives. He retired from a part time job and also sold his business of 13 years. So, here we are, in need of health insurance and applying through the Marketplace, because you have to, but that’s a story for another day. We were asked to estimate our income for 2015. Considering we are both currently without work, but assuming we will find something that challenges us we made an estimate of what we thought we might earn, not knowing of course what that would be or when. You must notify the Marketplace if your actual income changes during the year so that your premiums can be adjusted accordingly.

Here’s the kicker. We have to prove that what we estimated is what we are going to make. What! How do we do that? We’re not making anything yet? No problem says Uncle Sam. All we have to do is send in our W-2’s and self employment ledger from last year, or if we’re one of those early bird wackos who has his tax return done already, we can send that in.

How does what we made last year prove what we’ll make this year? I realize they are trying to catch people lying about their income to get the subsidy, but that hardly seems necessary. They already know! They checked with the IRS, when we applied for health care, to get our 2013 income and said our future estimate didn’t match what the IRS said we made two years ago! Of course it didn’t! I was employed, my husband was employed and now we’re not! Keep your pepper sauce in the fridge. Welcome to the rabbit hole Alice!