Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, one of the nation’s leading private health plans, has announced that it will drop its Medicare Advantage health insurance program at the end of the year. The headlines, bashing Obama and blaming health care reform legislation, were predictable.
- “Obamacare victims” ( Boston Herald.com, Sept. 30, 2010)
- “No, You Can’t Keep Your Current Health Coverage” (The American Spectator, Sept. 30, 2010)
- “The Obamacare Nightmare Begins: 22,000 Seniors Lose Their Current Coverage,” (Las Vegas ReviewJounral.com, September 28, 2010)
- “22,000 lose their health insurance due to Obamacare,” (examiner .com, September 29, 2010)
- “The Heavy Hand of Kathleen Sebelius,” (Forbes, September 30)
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But the headlines were not just predictable–they were dead wrong.
Pilgrim did not decide to “cancel its Medicare Advantage coverage specifically because of new regulations imposed by Obama's health care law,” as the American Spectator, like so many others, suggested.
Another law, the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (MIPPA), passed two years before health reform legislation, drove Harvard Pilgrim’s decision to shut down its “First Seniority Freedom Plan” says Harvard Pilgrim CEO Eric Schultz.