Seniors lose insurance and doctors under Obamacare

Retired chemist Edward Schokowitz was incredulous when he received a letter from Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey early last month saying his Medicare Advantage Plan, which had no premium, would be eliminated next year.

“They took all the senior citizens and threw us out of the plan. They now want to give us the same plan for $153 [per month],” he told the Daily Caller. “The President said you can’t be kicked out of your plan. He lies.”

Schokowitz is one of many Medicare beneficiaries now learning that — like Americans who buy insurance on the individual market — they are losing their insurance, and in some cases their doctors, under Obamacare.

Private insurance companies that cover patients with government funds under the Medicare Advantage program have quietly started to dump doctors and patients because of Obamacare budget cuts.

Schkowitz, 75, who lives in a senior citizen complex near Atlantic City, would also pay more for prescription drugs under the new plan. The co-pay for a three-month supply of one of his medications increases next year from $7.50 to $54.00.

Thousands of New Jersey residents are suffering the same fate . Currently, 74,000 Garden State residents are enrolled in Blue Cross Blue Shield Medicare Advantage. Nearly half have zero-premium plans.

But in 2014, New  Jersey Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield is eliminating all zero-premium plans with prescription drug coverage and all but two of its other plans with monthly fees.

New Jersey Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield spokesman Tom Vincz tells the Daily Caller that “due to rising health care costs and cuts to Medicare Advantage we had to make these product changes.”

Via: Daily Caller

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Blue Cross NC: No payments made through health care exchange

It's been one month since the rollout of Obamacare, but problems persist as Healthcare.gov is still struggling to stay online.

The public's problems in trying to deal with the troubled Health Insurance Marketplace website aren't the only problems plaguing the system. WNCN Investigates learned the state's largest insurer has experienced a number of problems with the system

Blue Cross Blue Shield has more than 3.7 million customers in our state, but internal emails obtained by WNCN show that as of last Friday, only one person had enrolled for health insurance through the Exchange and that person hasn't paid.

Without payment, enrollment means nothing because the customer is still not officially in the system.

Click here to read BCBS's internal communications

Part of that payment issue may come from the government's technical problems. Blue Cross Blue Shield emails indicate the "payment re-direct option" on the government servers isn't working.

In fact, the government's whole system is so plagued that emails say BCBS made a "business decision to refrain from uploading data" to prevent false data from entering its system.

Meanwhile, people are not embracing BCBS's marketplace. According to those emails, less than 1,000 people even filled out applications as of Oct. 25.

BCBS spokesman Lew Borman responded, saying, "problems with the Exchange have been widely reported.

"We are getting applications every day," Borman explained. "Enrolling customers requires us to verify their data and collect payment.

Via: WNCN

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CareFirst says 76,000 customers will lose current coverage due to Obamacare

CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield is being forced to cancel plans that currently cover 76,000 individuals in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., due to changes made by President Obama's health care law, the company told the Washington Examiner today.

That represents more than 40 percent of the 177,000 individuals covered by CareFirst in those states.

Though Obama famously promised that those who liked their health care coverage could keep it under his program, in reality, the health care law imposes a raft of new regulations on insurance policies starting Jan. 1 that are forcing insurers across the country to terminate existing plans.

In theory, rules were supposed to allow pre-existing plans to be "grandfathered in," but they were written so narrowly that they leave out many plans.

"Of the 177,000 individuals under age 65 who are covered by CareFirst, about 76,000 of them are in a non-grandfathered plan — a plan that will not comply with the guidelines imposed by the Affordable Care Act at their time of renewal this year or next," CareFirst said in an email in response to an inquiry by the Examiner.

It continued, "These individuals in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and portions of Northern Virginia will be required by the health law to purchase a new ACA-compliant health plan. This phenomenon is not unique to CareFirst and its members, but rather a result of industrywide changes in accordance with new ACA health plan standards."

While individuals in Maryland and Virginia will have the option of shopping for new plans either on the Obamacare exchanges or the individual market, D.C. residents who get cancellation notices will be forced to purchase insurance on the exchange.

Via: Washington Examiner

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With His Premiums More Than Doubling, This Dad Would “Rather File Bankruptcy” Than Deal with Obamacare

Ben Neptun and his wife Charla are “furious” their family’s health insurance premium will be raised from $419 to $899 per month because of Obamacare.

“We will absolutely go in a hole with this change,” Ben said.

Ben, 36, and Charla, 34, are both home health nurses in Mobile, Alabama. They each make about $23 an hour and have spent the last year learning how to budget and recover from debt acquired in previous marriages. With a blended family of five—a 15-year-old, a 2-year-old, and a 10-month-old—Ben said “there’s no room for several hundred dollars extra per month” in their budget.

The Neptun family buys their insurance directly from Blue Cross Blue Shield and spends about $2,000 a year on health care for the family, not including the monthly premium. So when Ben received a letter from Blue Cross explaining health insurance rates were increasing to comply with the new Obamacare regulations, he was angry. The new regulations in Obamacare force healthy families like his to “spend a boatload for nothing,” he explained.

“We’re healthy, non-obese, non-smokers, and on no medication,” Ben said. “I should not have to pay more.”

Ben said if he is forced to spend $500 more per month on insurance, then that’s $500 less that’s going into his family’s basic needs like groceries, savings, and his children’s college funds. He’d “rather file bankruptcy and do without health insurance” because “the fines are less.”

Via: The Foundry

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Zero Enroll in New LA Plan on Obamacare’s First Day

Louisiana’s top health-insurance provider said that not a single person enrolled in a new health-care plan offered through the Affordable Care Act on its first day.

An executive with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana told the Times-Picayunethat the agency was unable to sell the plan because customers were unable to access the HealthCare.gov website due to its website’s sluggishness. “It was not as intense as we had anticipated,” the company’s vice president of communication said of the company’s sales. He urged supporters and critics, however, to “take a deep breath and relax” and assured them that the website would eventually allow consumers to enroll in a plan.

According to the newspaper, the company spent $60 million in preparation of the October 1 rollout, but the website continued to stall on the day of its rollout. One interested applicant spent five hours trying to get onto the site, but eventually resorted to calling a customer-service representative and was told she would receive plan options via e-mail.

The other Louisiana companies offering plans available through the Affordable Care Act said they are still waiting on numbers from the program’s first day.

Via: National Review Online

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