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01-02-2012, 11:37 PM
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Obamacare: Impact on Seniors
By Robert Moffit, Ph.D.
May 20, 2010
According to surveys, no group of Americans is more skeptical of Obamacare than senior citizens—and with good reason.......
....Medicare Advantage plans, which currently attract almost one in four seniors, will see enrollment cut roughly in half over the next 10 years. Senior citizens will thus be more dependent on traditional Medicare than they are today and will have fewer health care choices.
Initial Provisions
Under the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, Congress deliberately created a gap in Medicare drug coverage (the so-called “donut hole”) in which seniors would be required to pay 100 percent of drug costs up to a specified amount........
Fewer Plan Choices
With the freezing of Medicare Advantage payments in 2011, Congress has set the stage for a progressive reduction in seniors’ access to, and choice of, the popular Medicare Advantage health plans.
In 2012, the law will begin reducing the federal benchmark payment for these plans. In 2014, these health plans must maintain a medical loss ratio of 85 percent, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services is to suspend and even terminate enrollment in plans that miss this target.
Enrollment in Medicare Advantage by 2017 is estimated to be cut roughly in half, from a projected 14.8 million (under current law) to 7.4 million. Since there are serious gaps in Medicare coverage, including the absence of catastrophic protection, roughly nine out of 10 seniors on traditional Medicare already need to purchase supplemental insurance, such as Medigap.
Without Medicare Advantage, millions more seniors will have to go through the cumbersome process of paying two separate premiums for two health plans.....
http://www.heritage.org/research/rep...act-on-seniors
.....AARP is the nation’s leading provider of Medigap plans and has a contract in which AARP financially gains for every additional Medigap enrollee.
Based on low, mid and high-range estimates, AARP stands to financially gain, over and above the millions of dollars they currently receive from United, between $55 million and $166 million in 2014 alone as a result of new Medigap enrollees stemming from the health care law’s cuts to MA, which AARP strongly endorsed.
Under the mid-range estimate and under their current contract, AARP’s financial gain from the health care law could exceed $1 billion during the next 10 years. This is because AARP will see their royalty payments increase as seniors are forced out of MA plans and buy AARP Medigap plans instead.....
http://republicans.waysandmeans.hous...umentID=232179
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