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How to game the Obamacare system

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LET’S START WITH SOME CHEAP PIZZA: Courtesy of Slickdeals, we learn that online pizza orders get 50% off with the code SUM50 at Papa John’s.

FREE CLUB CARLSON GOLD STATUS?: Apparently Delta Skymiles members may be eligible for Club Carlson Gold status. Delta Points has the story.

GAMING THE OBAMACARE SYSTEM: First off, a word about politics. I’m going to touch on Obamacare today, but there is no intent to be partisan on my part. There are about a million political websites already, and the world does not need another. My interests lie in financial deals, gaming the system, behavioral outliers, and suchlike.

And that, not politics, is what brings me to Obamacare today. Here’s Forbes:

If you’ve been following the latest news around Obamacare, you know that on Tuesday evening, just before the Independence Day holiday, the White House announced that it would be delaying the implementation of the health law’s employer mandate—requiring all firms with more than 50 employees to provide health coverage to their workers—until 2015.

According to the law, you aren’t eligible for Obamacare’s subsidies if your employer has offered you what the government considers “affordable” coverage. But if employers are no longer going to report whether or not they’ve offered “affordable” coverage, how can the government verify whether or not workers are eligible for subsidies?

Now we know the answer. The government is going with what Kliff and Somashekhar call “the honor system.” “We have concluded that the…proposed rule is not feasible for implementation for the first year of operations,” say the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “The exchange may accept the applicant’s attestation regarding enrollment in an eligible employer-sponsored plan…without further verification, instead of following the procedure in §155.320(d)(3)(iii).”

And it’s not just there. The feds will also allow people to gain means-tested subsidized coverage on the exchanges without having to…test their means. “For income verification, for the first year of operations, we are providing Exchanges with temporarily expanded discretion to accept an attestation of projected annual household income without further verification.”

Hopefully I don’t need to say this, but lying to obtain government benefits isn’t really my thing and I certainly don’t condone it. At the same time, people who read this blog and others in the points-and-miles-o-sphere are savvier than most about how human beings respond to incentives. We recognize that if there is a system to be gamed, it will be gamed, even if we personally have no interest in doing the gaming ourselves.

I’m wondering three things:

  1. How much will this one flaw be exploited?
  2. How many other flaws, loopholes, and exploits will be uncovered?
  3. How many of the loopholes will be of a more legal and ethical nature, and thus of interest to readers of this blog?

I’m guessing that both (2) and (3) will be greater than zero, as complexity and gaming the system go hand in hand. Time will tell.

A REMINDER OF WHY WE GAME THE POINTS-AND-MILES SYSTEM: Hack My Trip has a nice trip report on a Cathay Pacific first class flight from Hong Kong to New York. It’s nice to see what you can get by being smart with your miles and points, and author Tahsir Ahsan is apparently quite smart in these matters.

New Pointbreaks, a possibly-expiring credit card offer, a Bitcoin prepaid card, and a first-class ticket for $350

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DON’T FORGET: My Nobel Prize-winning book, which has also been nominated for three Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, a Grammy, a Pulitzer, and an ESPY, is available free on Amazon until roughly midnight PST tonight. If you don’t download it, then you’ll feel left out of the office water cooler conversation on Monday. Don’t make that mistake.

NEW POINTBREAKS: Priority Club has its new list of Pointbreaks out, sort of. For those of you not familiar with Pointbreaks, it’s a promotion Priority Club does every few months where you can book certain hotels for only 5,000 points per night. Sometimes it’s an okay value, and sometimes it’s an exceptional value, and the exceptional values tend to disappear fast.

Priority Club hasn’t updated its official Pointbreaks page yet as of press time, but they should be updating any time now. Here’s a list from Loyalty Lobby. The rooms are currently bookable at the 5,000 point per night rate, so go for it!

AUF WIDERSEHEN, LUFTHANSA 50,000?: There are reports that the Lufthansa Miles and More 50,000 mile offer may end this Sunday. It’s one of the few good affiliate links I have, so by all means gather your friends and apply for the card, and then you can all enjoy flying across the U.S. in business/first for only 17,000 miles, which seems to be the attraction for this offer.

HOW TO GET A FIRST CLASS TRANSCONTINENTAL SEAT FOR $350: Speaking of Miles and More, if you don’t want to sign up for credit cards, here’s a way to buy into some M&M miles and effectively buy the aforementioned first class cross-country ticket for $350.

DID I MENTION I WROTE A BOOK?: Yes? Okay then.

BITCOIN PREPAID CARD: I have a soft spot for superfluous financial products, so here’s the Bitcoin prepaid card. Why would you want to get this card? Because it has the word “bitcoin” on it, apparently. I’m not even sure if it’s available to Americans, anyway. From the write-up at CoinDesk.com:

Don’t get too excited though, as this card does not let you transmit bitcoin via the card. Despite the website’s UK top level domain, the company informed us that the card primarily holds Euros.

When we contacted The Bitcoin Company, who are offering this card, a representative told us,  “The card works as a normal prepaid credit card. The difference is users can buy it with bitcoins, and fund it with bitcoins.”

There are also some significant fees involved:

There’s an initial fee for ordering the card too, which will currently set you back 0.787139 BTC, which at the exchange rates of the time of writing, 58.55 EUR (nearly £50 GBP). The card also has the option to transfer funds via SMS.

I’m not very good with conversions from European measurements, but by my calculations you will have to pay over 38 hectares per bushel just to get this card. Not worth it!

 

The airlines are out of control, which is why you should spend more time reading blogs like this one

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ON A PERSONAL NOTE: Our applications were deferred at first, but Mrs. PFDigest and I were ultimately approved for one Chase Ink card each. Assuming we don’t mess up the minimum spend, 120,000 Ultimate Rewards points are coming our way! Unfortunately, we have no idea what to do with them because not a single blogger thought to post any suggestions about what to do with UR Points. Can you use them to fly? Are there any angles to work with hotels? Perhaps we’ll never know. Frankly, we were lucky to find out about this obscure, unpublicized deal in the first place, so we’ll count our blessings.

Anyway, this has actually been a quiet year for the PFDigest household on the credit card front, what with my forthcoming book and of course blogging soaking up a lot of time and energy, so it feels good to get our accounts increasing again. Thanks Chase!

SLICKDEALS DU JOUR: If you’re curious about how much electricity you’re using, the Kill-A-Watt electric meter is available for $14.99 with free shipping, which is about as cheap as that device gets. And if you haven’t already stocked up on office supplies, you can get 25% off one item at Office Depot.

THE AIRLINES ARE OUT OF CONTROL: Those seats in coach? They’re not small enough… yet:

Yes, we all know about shrinking legroom, but the next time you board a flight, count the number of seats that stretch across a single row.

Qatar Airways flight attendant Ilham Zimbi did just that on a brand new 787 Dreamliner. She showed off the airline’s new plane at the Paris Air Show. Her count goes to nine seats across, which is fairly standard for wide body planes. It’s as much as Boeing’s 787 has room for.

Airbus’ Christopher Emerson says that’s where his company’s new A350 has an advantage.

“The A350 is a larger airplane,” says Emerson.

Indeed, it’s a few inches wider, which means — by shaving one inch off an 18-inch seat — the A350 can fit ten passengers across on a type of plane that typically seats nine.

Oh sure, we say we’re not going to take this kind of treatment from the airlines… but we will, and then we’ll write articles on Slate about how unfair it is that other people recline their seats.

One alternative is to figure out how to sneak into first class somehow, and sadly that is getting more difficult. Delta recently instituted spending requirements for elite status, and now United has as well. The upshot is that you now have to pay at least ten cents per mile to get top-tier status.

I’m not an airline elite, never have been, and probably never will be, so I have no skin in the game, but I sure hope this doesn’t mean an end to mileage runs. As a fan of all varieties of gaming the system, mileage runs are probably my favorite hack that I personally have no interest in doing. The fact that there are people who will spend an entire weekend flying back and forth across the country just to pad their accounts is fascinating, possibly more so than buying coins from the U.S. Mint and immediately depositing them or buying a whole bunch of pudding.

But then, the airlines taketh away and the airlines giveth right back. As Rapid Travel Chai reminds us, you can get the Delta spending requirement waived by spending $25,000 on a Delta Amex card. Not only that, but the Delta Business Platinum Amex bonus is currently 55,000 miles. RTC says it’s the best he’s seen, and he pays closer attention to this card than I do, so I’ll take his word.

I can’t help but wonder, thouigh, if the ever-changing rules of travel are part of a blogger-employment program. What the heck would we write about if they kept things simple?

How to default on student loans! Plus hotel loyalty programs compared, and an all-you-can-fly airline

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HOW TO DEFAULT ON STUDENT LOANS: It was a long struggle, but in Oregon, somebody figured out how to beat the system:

The financial advice gets repeated as a mantra: Student loans are the one form of debt that can’t be forgiven, even in bankruptcy. But a Klamath Falls man has proven that’s not always true.

Mike Hedlund waged a 10-year legal battle to force his lender to discharge most of the $85,000 in federal student loans he built up while earning his 1997 law degree from Willamette University in Salem. He argued that, even when working full-time and living frugally, he could not repay that much money and also maintain a minimal standard of living for himself and his family.

Last week, in a decision that could affect debtors in eight states, a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, Calif., ruled in Hedlund’s favor.

It upheld a bankruptcy judge’s ruling that Hedlund proved all three factors necessary to have $53,000 of his debt forgiven: He made a good faith effort to repay the money; he can’t earn enough to both repay the money and maintain a basic standard of living; and his inability to earn substantially more is likely to persist.

There are a lot more details to the case if you’re interested. Mr. Hedlund, who makes $40,000 per year, still owes $32,000, but that’s a heck of a lot better than $85,000. I did like this paragraph toward the end:

Natalie Scott, a Eugene lawyer who represented Hedlund, said lawyers for the loan agency suggested that forgiving most of Hedlund’s loans would “open the flood gates” to healthy college graduates claiming they couldn’t earn enough and demanding their loans be forgiven.

Let’s hope so!

$10 OFF $100 AT HOME DEPOT: Through June 23, use the code JUNEHD. Online only, but you can pick up your order at the store. (H/T: My Money Blog)

FINANCIAL SECTOR THINKS IT’S ABOUT READY TO RUIN WORLD AGAIN: The Onion reports.

COMPARING TOP-TIER HOTEL STATUS: Hack My Trip did some great work comparing the upper echelons of major hotel loyalty programs. There’s a lot of discussion there in addition to what’s on the charts, so if you’re interested in contrasting and comparing, please check out his article.

Courtesy of Hack My Trip
Courtesy of Hack My Trip

ALL-YOU-CAN-FLY AIRLINE: There’s a new company called Surf Air whose business model is offer customers all-you-can-fly privileges in exchange for a set fee every month:

For that monthly membership fee, you receive such benefits as:

  • Flying as a passenger as many times as you want within a month for no extra cost or hidden fees
  • Always first-class luxury on executive aircraft with leather seats
  • A personal concierge to assist you with whatever you may want or need
  • Complimentary guest passes as long as you give a minimum advance notice of two weeks
  • Snacks and beverages are included in the monthly membership fee
  • No having to wait in line to pass through airport security checkpoints and be either scanned or endure a “pat-down” — or both
  • As few as 30 seconds to book your reservation
  • Quick access from your car to the aircraft — perhaps in as few as five minutes — at airports with free unlimited parking and complimentary Internet service
  • Be part of an “exclusive community of air travelers”

The four cities to where Surf Air will launch its airline service will be:

  • Los Angeles
  • Santa Barbara
  • Monterey
  • San Francisco

All this could be yours for the low, low price of $1,650 per month! It’s an interesting business model, we’ll see how they do.

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Saverocity is Journalistic in Nature, please obtain Professional Representation prior to attempting anything discussed herein. Opinions expressed here are author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, airlines or hotel chain, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.