Washington, DC – America’s elderly could soon see their health care cut by $3,700 per year due to sweeping Medicare cuts included in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
In testimony before the Health Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, Dr. Robert Book of the Health Systems Innovation Network unveiled a new analysis by the American Action Network that shows seniors enrolled in popular Medicare Advantage plans will see a loss of benefits equaling of $1,530 in 2015 alone – and growing to $3,700 when the cuts are fully phased-in in 2017.
The result, says Health Subcommittee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX), is “Thanks to the Affordable Care Act our elderly will see their health care and medicines cut, pay higher co-pays and deductibles, or have access to fewer local doctors and health care providers. Our seniors simply can’t afford less health care or higher costs.”
Frail seniors and those with the most severe chronic illnesses may be hurt the worst by the cuts, predicted Brady.
Today 16 million seniors are enrolled in Medicare Advantage, and more than half of new Medicare patients are choosing Medicare Advantage plans because they provide coordinated care, more predictable costs and caps on what seniors have to pay out-of-pocket.
“These cuts begin hurting seniors in 2015 because the White House delayed most of the original ObamaCare cuts past the recent elections. Although the White House is hoping no one notices, make no mistake that seniors in every state and nearly every county in America will be impacted beginning next year,” added Brady.
In fact, Chris Wing CEO of SCAN Health Plan in California testified that seniors are just now beginning to feel the cuts and, because 80 percent of the Medicare cuts have yet to take effect, SCAN will be forced to withdraw their Medicare Advantage plans from some communities in 2015, hitting low income and minority seniors particularly hard.
A link to the American Action Network analysis which identifies Medicare Advantage cuts for seniors in each congressional district in America is provided at http://www.dontcutourmedicare.com/medicare or http://americanactionnetwork.org/topic/aan-releases-study-examining-medicare-advantage-cuts-congressional-district
###