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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Morning Bell: 10 Questions for the Vice Presidential Debate

Tonight’s debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Representative Paul Ryan is supposed to cover both domestic and foreign policy. The Heritage Foundation’s policy experts have submitted 10 questions they would like to see asked in the debate.

Watch with us tonight—we will be streaming the debate live at 9 p.m. ET on our Debate 2012 page, with an experts’ live blog.

DOMESTIC POLICY

1. Obamacare takes $716 billion out of Medicare to fund Obamacare. This includes $156 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage. Currently, 27 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in Medicare Advantage, which is a private alternative to traditional Medicare. The Medicare Chief Actuary projects that by 2017, Obamacare’s severe cuts will decrease enrollment in Medicare Advantage by 50 percent and result in less generous benefit packages for those who do remain in the program. What changes would you make, if any, to ensure that these seniors are able to keep their current Medicare Advantage plan?

2. Patient choice is working well within Medicare and other government health programs. In addition to the private plans in Medicare Advantage, there are 1,100 plans in the Medicare drug program and hundreds of plans in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. None of these plans use “vouchers”; they receive a direct government contribution toward the cost of the plans. Would you expand patient choice in Medicare? Why or why not?

3. Most people under the age of 40 will pay more in Social Security taxes than they will receive in benefits, and Medicare adds to federal deficits faster than any other government spending program. How would you focus entitlement reform on reducing spending?

4. Under Obamacare, the Health and Human Services (HHS) preventive services mandate requires nearly all employers to cover abortion drugs and contraception regardless of religious or moral objection, effectively exempting only formal houses of worship. Should Americans be able to live out their faith commitments outside the four walls of their church—in the public square and in the way they run their businesses or non-profits?

5. It has been almost four years since the federal government took control of General Motors. Vice President Biden has said the bailout of the firm was a success. Was this a success? Why or why not? And when should the federal government sell the shares it still owns?

Obama: I’ll work with Republicans if they agree to raise taxes

MELBOURNE, Florida - President Barack Obama said in an interview partly broadcast Sunday that he would be "more than happy to work with the Republicans" to trim the swelling national debt — as long as they drop their opposition to raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

"You can't reduce the deficit unless you take a balanced approach that says, 'We've got to make government leaner and more efficient,'" the president told CBS's Scott Pelley. "But we've also got to ask people --like me or Gov. Romney, who have done better than anybody else over the course of the last decade, and whose taxes are just about lower than they've been in the last 50 years - to do a little bit more."

Obama said he would be willing to make "some adjustments to Medicare and Medicaid that would strengthen the programs." "The way to do that is to keep health care costs low. It's not to 'voucherize' programs so that suddenly seniors are the ones who are finding their expenses much higher."

That was a reference to Mitt Romney and running mate Paul Ryan. The Republicans have proposed a plan that would transform Medicare by giving the elderly voucher-style payments they could use to purchase health insurance. They say it would rein in runaway health care costs. But Democrats — and the impartial Congressional Budget Office — say it would eventually shift much of the burden of health care costs to the elderly.

"President Obama's latest false attacks are a sign of desperation," Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams said in a statement. Williams charged that Obama had "robbed" Medicare of $716 billion to pay for the health care law popularly known as Obamacare. (Obama's approach does not directly affect benefits — it reduces reimbursements to health care providers and insurance companies.)

Obama is attacking Romney on Medicare because "he can't talk about his record of crushing the middle class and failing to turn the economy around," said Williams.

Obama was to pursue that attack as he wrapped up a two-day bus tour in Florida. (The photo above was snapped as Obama prepared to eat with seniors at the Ossorio Bakery and Cafe while campaigning in Cocoa, Florida.)

Via: Yahoo! News

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