Over 500 Montanans May Lose Health Insurance Because of Missing Legal Paperwork

The Federal government sent out letters this week warning over 300,000 people that they will be losing their Health insurance if they fail to send in proper documentation to prove that they purchased their health insurance legally.

"We need to verify their citizenship or immigration status; that is that they are legally in the country," said Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services spokesman Mike Fierberg. "So, this is kind of a final notice to people that have not responded to multiple inquiries already that if they do not get their documentation into us by the first week of September, they will be cut off from their insurance plan by the end of September.

A little more than one percent of the approximately 36,600 marketplace plans purchased in Montana are still missing legal paperwork.

"In Montana we have mailed out approximately 500 letters out of more than a million people in Montana, so it's not very many," Fierberg said. "This is not a widespread problem in this part of the country. The vast majority of letters that we sent out went to addresses in Texas and Florida."

Only states that used the federally run marketplace received these letters, so none of these numbers will include data from highly populated (and high immigration) states like California and New York which have their own state-run exchanges.

Those that receive letters are not necessarily using insurance illegally. Individuals could simply have made a mistake like writing down their social security number incorrectly. Either way, they will lose coverage if they fail to respond over the course of the next two weeks.