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Some U.S. citizens asked to prove citizenship for Obamacare coverage

BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — WFTV found out about a new problem with Obamacare could cause hundreds of thousands of people to lose their health care coverage.

Some people are being asked to prove they’re Americans, even though they’ve lived in the United States all their lives.

Tracy Jewell, of Cocoa, is one of 94,000 Floridians who could lose Obamacare coverage because of citizenship questions.

Jewell, who was born in Pennsylvania, said she’s fed up with the complications that have come with the roll out of Obamacare.

“Nothing but problems since the beginning,” she said.

The Department of Health and Human Services recently notified Jewell that her application had inconsistencies and that she needed to prove her citizenship by sending in her birth certificate.

“I said, ‘You all are a government agency. You can pretty much tell me what color my eyes are and you’re questioning my citizenship?’ I was born in Pennsylvania,” Jewell said.

She doesn’t know why her citizenship could not be verified through her Social Security number.

“Then she asked me for discharge papers from the service for my husband. My husband was never in the service. They confused him with his deceased father,” Jewell said.

These problems for Jewell come on top of the difficult enrollment process.

“I would be in the middle of the application and then it would crash. And then it wouldn’t start where I left off at. I had to start all over again,” she said.

After finally getting insurance, she found out her doctor said he was no longer going to accept her insurance after not getting payments from the company for several patients.

“He said he doesn’t work for free,” she said.

Jewell put her husband’s birth certificate in the mail Wednesday hoping it will be her last hassle with the Affordable Care Act, until enrollment begins in three months.

The deadline for people to prove their citizenship is Sept. 5.

Those who don’t will once again be without insurance at the end of next month.

The Department of Health and Human Services would not directly say why Jewell couldn’t just re-enter her Social Security number.