Harvard Pilgrim Health Care is ending its Medicare health and prescription drug plan for seniors in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine because of changes to the program made by the Democrats’ health overhaul.  As a result, the Boston Globe reports that 22,000 seniors will lose their Medicare plan at the end of the year.  Seniors in New Hampshire will be particularly hard hit, as nearly 8 in 10 Medicare beneficiaries in Medicare Advantage (MA) are enrolled in a Harvard Pilgrim plan. 

This news comes on the heels of analysis conducted by the Obama Administration that predicts 1.2 million seniors will be forced out of their Medicare Advantage (MA) and Medicare prescription drug plan next year.  Many seniors in Utah and Colorado will no longer have the choice to enroll in MA.  All told, the Medicare actuaries predict that the 11 million seniors currently enrolled in an MA plan will soon receive “less generous benefit packages” as a result of ObamaCare’s $200 billion in cuts to their MA benefits over the next 10 years and 7.4 million seniors will either lose or be denied access to an MA plan.

A Harvard Pilgrim Vice President clearly stated why seniors should be so worried about what the Democrats’ health overhaul will mean for them:  “We became concerned by the long-term viability of Medicare Advantage programs in general.  We know that cuts in Medicare are being used to fund [ObamaCare].” 

It is time to repeal this misguided law which creates an unaffordable $1 trillion new entitlement program at the expense of America’s seniors and replace it with commonsense reforms that bring down the cost health insurance without burdensome mandates and hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes and Medicare cuts.

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