California government devolving into total incompetency as tax authorities mail out documents riddled with errors

(NaturalNews) Government in California continues to devolve into a nightmarish abyss of bureaucracy, as evidenced by a recent incident that serves to highlight the growing impotency of top-heavy administrative states.

As reported by CBS affiliate KPIX in Danville, tens of thousands of residents who bought insurance through the state's Obamacare exchange, Covered California, are going to be unpleasantly surprised when they file their taxes this year.

That's because the state's health plan has failed to send out a needed form in order for residents to be able to file, even though it was supposed to be sent by Feb. 2.

One such resident, Stacy Scoggins, told the local affiliate in an interview that, while she often gets mail from Covered California, that one vital form had still not arrived.

"After being on hold for 59 minutes, they told me that the 1095-A was never generated," Scoggins told the local station's ConsumerWatch news program.

"Discrepancies"

The 1095-A is a required document for Covered California enrollees; they must file it with their tax returns, but for the recent widow, not having it is a problem, because she is in a hurry to file.

"I need my tax refund," Scoggins said.

As further reported by KPIX, the bureaucracy failed in additional ways:

And she's far from the only Covered California enrollee with 1095 problems. About 100,000 or 12 percent of the forms generated by Covered California have inaccuracies.

"We realized the data wasn't exactly the same," Covered California spokesperson Dana Howard told KPIX.

Howard went on to say that the problems are due in large part to discrepancies between the Obamacare exchange's records and information used by participating insurance companies. Those inaccuracies include coverage dates, policy changes and the number of family members enrolled in the plan.

"There are some of these that are going to need reconciliation," Howard told the local station.

Still, he noted that Covered California sent them out anyway, in order beat the February 2 deadline (which, for many, still didn't happen).

"We did not want to hold up sending out the 1095s to everybody, so that we can correct those that we did have," Howard said.

The spokesman said corrected forms will be going out by the end of February, but as KPIX noted, if those contain more errors, residents will have to file yet another dispute and wait as long as 60 days for the bureaucracy to respond.

It has become too much for some, including Scoggins, who recently canceled her Covered California plan -- but still continues to get mail that essentially says, "Welcome to the exchange, now choose a plan."

In the broader sense, Obamacare itself is playing havoc on Americans in general. For instance, as The Washington Times reports, an Obamacare "subsidy error" is now forcing hundreds of thousands to re-file their taxes, because they inadvertently received more taxpayer money than they were entitled to receive.

More Obamacare "glitches"

The administration is now scrambling to fix the error that is affecting one out of every five people who signed up for coverage at the glitch-prone Healthcare.gov website. It, too, involves the form 1095-A:

Roughly 800,000 customers received a tax form that listed the wrong benchmark plan by which their subsidy is calculated. Filers need the form, known as a 1095-A, to reconcile their amount of subsidy with their income. ...

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Friday about 50,000 of the affected users filed already, causing headaches even as the White House tries to move beyond the stumbles that plagued its signature health overhaul last year.

How ironic that Americans living in the "Land of the Free" have to put up with such a cumbersome, bureaucratic-heavy, error-prone system to provide them with health insurance that the government is forcing them to buy.

It's no wonder that the healthcare system is so expensive; it's one of the most heavily regulated industries in the country.

Sources:

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com

http://www.washingtontimes.com

http://www.reuters.com