The Obama administration is shielding from the sequester an Obamacare subsidy program helping low-income people with out-of-pocket insurance costs. The cost-sharing subsidies differ from the better-known federal subsidies helping people to afford premium payments. These cost-sharing subsidies are only available to people earning less than 250 percent of the federal poverty level (about $29,000 for a single person, or $59,600 for a family of four) who purchase silver-level plans on Obamacare exchanges. In silver plans, insurers cover about 70 percent of health care costs. The cost-sharing reductions are automatically applied to the plans to help with out-of-pocket costs, so people purchasing them might not even notice they're getting the subsidy.