NJ ACA Mandate

New Jersey residents will have to pay a penalty if they go without health insurance in 2019 under a new state law that takes effect starting New Year’s Day.

The New Jersey Health Insurance Market Preservation Act continues the ACA mandate that requires residents to have and pay for insurance, or else they are at risk of paying hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in penalties when they file their 2019 tax returns.

President Donald Trump repealed the mandate on a federal level earlier last year.

An individual who does not have insurance during a month in 2019 will have to pay about 2.5 percent of his or her income, which could be somewhere between $695 and $3,012, according to the state Department of the Treasury.

The penalty would be more, in many cases, for families, but there are exemptions.

The law isn’t meant to punish people, advocates said, but to encourage people to get insurance coverage.

“Restoring the individual mandate is essential to keeping healthcare affordable, as it will ensure younger and healthier people obtain insurance and spread the risk in the health insurance pool,” Ray Castro, director of health police at left-leaning policy and advocacy group New Jersey Policy Prospective, said in a statement when the law was passed.

“Without robust participation of these individuals, insurance premiums will climb and the market could destabilize,” he said.

The state’s uninsured rate has dropped steadily since Medicaid was expanded under the ACA in 2013, when the rate was about 13 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The uninsured rate in New Jersey was about 8 percent in 2017.

Policy experts say the ACA marketplaces and plans have insured many people who did not have coverage before, but the number of people selecting plans in open enrollment for the last two years has dipped.

Entire article at
https://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/breaking/uninsured-residents-at-risk-for-penalties-as-n-j-law/article_d44e6f70-a603-554f-9b94-5bcd10c4af76.html

For more information about the individual mandate and penalties, see state.nj.us/treasury/njhealthinsurancemandate.