Then after reading volumes of blah blah blah blah blah and having my eyes bleeding from all the massive amounts of pages of text, I decided to watch videos describing Medicaid and how to get it. Somewhat even worse. And almost all sources of information came with a little tinge of suss. Like, I got a strong vibe that many were trying to sell me insurance.
One site bemoaned the horrible fact that in Florida adults under the age of 65 can't get Medicaid, I guess without a disability, and aren't eligible for the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, if they earn less than 100% of the poverty line.
If I were sipping a beverage, I might have done a spit take. What?!
I looked further into this and sure enough it's true. The federal poverty line for a single adult with no dependents is a bit over $14,000 a year. Oh fuck! I haven't made $14,000 a year since 2018. I thought back to each of my enrollments annually with the Marketplace and remembered the question about estimated income for the upcoming year.
I remembered when I enrolled for coverage for 2019, I did assume then that I would find a replacement job as I hadn't yet pulled the trigger on Operation V so I put down some low-ball estimate like maybe around $15,000 a year* (way lower than I would assumedly make but I figured it would take a few months to find work plus I was playing with the sliding scale on the Marketplace site and I got better rates for insurance the lower the income so...). Of course, had I gotten full-time employment, they would have offered health coverage through my new workplace and I would have had to drop the Obamacare but that would all have been reflected later and I would have done so correctly online as needed.
Long story short, 2019 comes and goes, Operation V is executed, and I don't make a single dime throughout the whole year, legally that is. So I fill out my taxes, put zero in the income column, fill out Form 8962, on the line where it has you put the percentage of your income as it relates to the federal poverty line, I put in 0, in parentheses it says that if the amount is less than 100%, I need to read the instructions. I have copies of the instructions with each of my files so I must have read them, but I will say, even rereading them now, they are a little vague regarding the term estimating income for the coming year. You see the instructions say that it's okay to be under 100% of the federal poverty line as long as you assumed you would be making 100% of the federal poverty line when you enrolled for your health plan during the enrollment period.
Now I know what my April 2020 self would have said to myself. How the fuck could anyone prove that I had all good intentions to earn at least $14,000 or so for the coming year but just couldn't find a job, or health issues came into play, or whatever! Unfortunately, 2024 Michael realizes that that excuse may float for maybe a year, heck, maybe even a couple years especially as Covid hit, BUT FIVE YEARS IN A ROW!?
And remember my angst about all of this comes not at a time when I can simply just stop and remedy my ways, I have to keep going with this fraud, like it or not, for FIVE MORE YEARS!!
The tally, you ask?
I took a little over half a year of credits for 2018 but since I worked 4 months of that year full time before I was fired, I made $123% of the federal poverty line so I'm cool there.
But for tax years 2019 through 2023, the total tax credits add up to a little over some $41,000.
And with premiums continually rising each year, I would anticipate that for the next five years the amount wouldn't simply double but would probably be close to 150% more so I guess I'd be looking at around $100K in stolen federal tax credits by 2028. If they don't catch me before then.
If I just stayed drinking on a continual basis as I've been doing all these years, I would have continued to brush all this aside and never given it no mind, tisk tisk, fiddly fee.
I hope I have access to the internet in federal prison. It'd be nice to keep this blog going.
*The amount I estimate for annual income every year.