Former CBO Director: 26% of Seniors Have Had Medicare Advantage Plans Cancelled Thanks to ObamaCare

We already know if you like your plan, you can’t keep it under ObamaCare. America’s seniors are starting to realize that the negative effects of the law apply to them, too.

ObamaCare’s egregious cuts to Medicare included $156 billion in direct cuts to Medicare Advantage plans. So far, only 4% of those cuts have taken effect, but as many as 26% of seniors on Medicare Advantage have been informed that their plans have been cancelled or in some cases have been told that those plans no longer operate at all in their region.

Other seniors may soon be finding that, while they can keep their plan, they can’t keep their doctor, their premium, or their benefits.

“The administration will be forced to admit to seniors that it gutted a well-liked and efficient program to funnel the money into Healthcare.gov and other misadventures,” former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Times.

The White House can try to spin this latest disastrous outcome from ObamaCare, but we bet telling those senior Americans that their popular Medicare Advantage plans were ‘inferior’ won’t fly.

From former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin in the Washington Times:

Certainly, the administration thought it was in hot water over millions of canceled individual-market policies in 2013. It better brace itself, though, for the wrath of seniors who will suffer the fallout of the budgetary attack on Medicare Advantage plans.

Obamacare financed its assault on existing insurance arrangements in part by $156 billion over 10 years in direct cuts to Medicare Advantage plans — cuts to be exacerbated by indirect spillovers from changes in the Medicare Advantage funding formula.

It is inevitable that funding cuts will take their toll on these plans. By my math, the Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2014 Medicare Advantage Spotlight shows that seniors enrolled in 349 Medicare Advantage plans received cancellation letters, and a portion of the seniors enrolled in 194 plans were advised that their plan no longer operated in their region.

That’s a pretty big market adjustment (26 percent of 2,074 plans), considering that only 4 percent of the anticipated Medicare Advantage cuts have transpired.

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The administration could try to respond to plan cancellations using the same playbook as with the individual market — dismissing those as “inferior” plans.

That excuse will not hold up in the ever-popular Medicare Advantage program, though. All plans must meet a minimum level of services, and must compete on the merits of price and quality for Medicare beneficiaries.

Instead, the administration will be forced to admit to seniors that it gutted a well-liked and efficient program to funnel the money into Healthcare.gov and other misadventures.