Helth insurance credits

[nikosgreb]

If my spouse and I made less then 4 times the national poverty level in 2019 and we had medicare for the first four-month out of the year, should we have to pay back the premium tax credits provided by the state when we had medicare?

[DawnC]

Possibly, but it depends on many factors.  This new tax credit works differently than most. The premium tax credit was available immediately when you enrolled in a plan through the Marketplace. It worked like a discount so you could get help paying for coverage throughout the year rather than having to wait until you filed your 2019 taxes. Payments of the premium tax credit went directly to the insurance company to pay a share of the monthly health insurance premiums charged to you. The amount was calculated based on what you estimated your 2019 income would be, along with how many people your plan needed to cover and where you lived.

Now that you're reporting your actual 2019 income, ZIP code, and family size, we used this info to calculate the discount you should've received throughout the year and made the necessary adjustment. You may get more of a credit (this happens if you made less money than you estimated when you applied) or have to pay some of it back (this happens if you made more money than you estimated when you applied), but there are limits on how much you have to pay back.

[AmeliesUncle]

Was the medicare retroactive to those months, or did you just have both things going at the same time?

[LindaB1993]

If you have a Marketplace plan, you can keep it until your Medicare coverage starts. If you like, you can keep your Marketplace plan too. But once your Medicare Part A coverage starts, you’ll no longer be eligible for any premium tax credits or other cost savings you may be getting for your Marketplace plan. So you’d have to pay full price for the Marketplace plan.

If you have Medicare Part A (Hospital Insurance), you're considered covered under the health care law and don't need a Marketplace plan. But having only Medicare Part B (Medical Insurance) doesn't meet this requirement. TIPIf you have only Medicare Part B, you aren't considered to have qualifying health coverage.