First Focus sent a letter to President Obama, urging the Administration to ensure that final U.S. Treasury Department Affordable Care Act (ACA) regulations make health coverage affordable for families. The ACA offers tax credits to make private, employer-sponsored health insurance more affordable for working families. The law bases eligibility determinations on a comparison of the cost of the insurance and the family’s income. But the Treasury Department’s first draft of regulations implementing that provision of the ACA base that assessment on the cost of insuring the employee alone, instead of the cost of family coverage. While individual-only employer-sponsored health insurance costs average around $5,400 a year, annual costs for family coverage average $15,000 – nearly triple. If not clarified by the Administration, this interpretation would likely leave hundreds of thousands of children as well as their non-employee parents ineligible for tax credits or subsidized coverage in the health insurance Exchanges.
