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Obamacare 'Bug' Cancels Tennessee Family's Plan

September 25, 2014

The Internal Revenue Service has demanded some taxpayers return money from their health care tax credit after finding discrepancies between their tax returns and Obamacare applications.

This is the case for the Ballards, a retired couple in Memphis, Tenn. When their health care premiums surged, they turned to Obamacare’s HealthCare.gov.

Tennessee’s WREG reported:

"I went through HealthCare.gov, and I turned around and did everything step by step," Joseph Ballard said.

Then Ballard’s wife began a part-time job.

Ballard was contacted by the Health Insurance Marketplace shortly afterward to reflect the family’s changed income. The change would alter the health care subsidy the family was receiving.

But instead, the Ballards' insurance was cancelled.

"When they turn around and they did the adjustment, they didn’t tell me that they were going to cancel the insurance. All they told me was that we were going to have to pay the difference," Ballard said.

After contacting Health and Human Services (HHS) Ballard’s plan was reinstated, but he and his wife were not covered for two weeks.

HHS spokesperson Aaron Albright chalked the cancellation up to human error and reiterated that consumers’ tax creed is based on income.

"…Rather than the plan being updated, it was terminated then reinstated with the update once the issue was discovered. We do not believe these consumers experienced any gap in coverage because of this, and we are continually working to enhance this process," Albright wrote in an email.

Ballard admitted he was pleased with his affordable plan, but the "bugs" need to be worked out.

"It’s a great program, but there’s a lot of still bugs that need to be taken out of the program to make it a lot easier for the people to understand it," he said.