How do we define success for Obamacare?

Following is a story from the Health and Human Services Department; part of the campaign to keep promoting Obamacare. I point this out not because it relates to a gay couple in Texas who are taxed for employer health care coverage unlike in forty-three other states, but because the real point is that the Affordable Care Act allows and even encourages gaming the system at the expense of taxpayers. Look at the sentence I placed in bold. That “less expensive coverage” must result from the benefits of government tax credits.

So we have an employer providing benefits, one federal law saying the value of those benefits is taxable income unless the couple is legally married in the state where they reside and in Texas gay marriage is not legal so this couple does the reasonable thing and shifts the burden not only for the one partner, but also for two children. The federal government loses the original tax revenue attributable to the partner and also pays for the insurance tax credits for the partner and her children.

So in the mind of the Administration all this is success attributable to Obamacare. Frankly, I’m not sure who the winners and losers are in all this. It appears the only winner other than these partners is the employer that now avoids any potential cost for the children and the previously covered partner.

Daryn DeZengotita, a self-employed social media strategist, was grateful that Celia Barshop’s employer, a small nonprofit in Dallas, offered health insurance to domestic partners, but it came at a high cost to the two women.

Besides the expensive premium, it gnawed on Daryn that the benefit was taxed because under Texas law– even though Daryn and Celia have been together for 16 years and had adopted two brothers out of foster care – same-sex marriages are not legal. Health insurance benefits for legally married couples are not taxed.

When the Health Insurance Marketplace opened for enrollment last year, she leapt at it. “I’m 48. I’m no longer a young invincible. But health insurance was always something out of reach for me,” she told me recently.

Daryn says her family with Celia is a “complicated” one. But those complications did not interfere with enrollment in an affordable, quality Marketplace plan.

She said the questions asked during the enrollment process were not intrusive and dealt with their issues. “It got a clear picture of my family. We’re a complicated family.”

And of profound significance to members of the LGBT community, Daryn said, “Our relationship is respected along with that of anyone else.”

With assistance provided by the Marketplace, Daryn was able to get a plan for herself that will save them a couple of hundred dollars a month. For now, their teenage sons are on Celia’s employer-sponsored plan, although when open enrollment begins again in November, they will see if the boys can get less expensive coverage.