Social Security number collection gets underway

Anthem Blue Cross: Social Security number collection gets underway

May 30, 2016

Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA or health care reform law), U.S. citizens and legal residents must have basic health insurance or face a penalty. This basic insurance is called minimum essential coverage (MEC).  Many people already get coverage that counts as MEC through their employers. Those who don’t have it may have to pay a penalty to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).  It’s called the individual shared responsibility payment. 

Reporting for individual and fully insured (FI) group business
Employers, insurance companies and others who provide MEC will be required to report who’s covered with them to the IRS. This is called Minimum Essential Coverage Reporting, or IRS Code Section 6055 Reporting, and it will take place each year. This is how the federal government will make sure people have MEC. It’s also how the IRS will determine who may owe a penalty for not having coverage.

Self-funded or Administrative Services Only (ASO) groups are also responsible for filing their own reports, using form 1095-C.

Collecting Social Security numbers
As required by law, we now file the 1095-B form for our fully insured groups and send a copy to the plan members. When we send the IRS reports, we’ll list all individuals covered under a group’s plan by their Social Security numbers (SSNs). For some of our members and dependents, we are missing their SSNs. In these cases, the IRS requires us to collect them for reporting purposes. In June, a staggered mailing began and will continue through the summer and early fall to gather this data. 

You can see a sample of the letter and form to be returned by the member.

As a reminder, ASO groups are responsible for getting the SSNs from workers and their dependents. They can hire a third party to do the reporting for them, but the employer is responsible for the report being complete and correct. We will not act as the third party for ASO groups and will not file the report for a fee.

Questions?
For more details about MEC and IRS reporting, read this fact sheet. You can refer your Individual clients and also have your group clients refer their employees for more information about this topic by going to anthem.com/ca and selecting the Resources tab.

This article applies to:

• California
• Small Group, Large Group, and Individual (under 65)

Need important information about members on your policy

Dear Valued Member,

Thank you for choosing us for your health care coverage. We’re writing to you because we need to get some information that’s required by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Under the federal health care reform law, also called the Affordable Care Act, most people in the U.S. must have basic health insurance coverage. If they don’t, they’ll have to pay a penalty. The IRS is using Social Security numbers (SSN) to determine which people have coverage and won’t have to pay a penalty. We don’t have SSN information for your policy. Under the law, we must ask for that information and give it to the IRS.
What we need you to do:

• Look over the form we’ve sent with this letter. We’ve listed each member with missing SSN information.
• Fill in the missing SSN for each member listed.
• Sign and date the form.
• Mail it to us using the envelope we’ve sent with this form.

Protecting your privacy

We cannot take your information by phone, email or fax. Please send it to us by mail. We take protection of privacy very seriously, and have strict policies in place to protect your privacy.

For more details, go to <Brand URL> and choose the Resources tab. You can also find an explanation of why we are asking for this information on the IRS website. Just go to irs.gov/Affordable-Care-Act and choose Questions and Answers from the topics on the left side. Then, choose Reporting Social Security Numbers to Your Health Insurance Company.