Honey, They Shrank The Network

Repeatedly, President Obama reassured us that "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Now, we learn the President may have pulled a fast one.

... Elderly New Yorkers are in a panic after getting notices that insurance companies are booting their doctors from the Medicare Advantage program as a result of the shifting medical landscape.

That leaves patients with unenviable choices: keep the same insurance plan and find another doctor, pay out of pocket or look for another plan where their physician is a member.

New York State Medical Society President Sam Unterricht is demanding a congressional probe after learning that one health carrier alone, UnitedHealthcare, is terminating contracts with up to 2,100 doctors serving 8,000 Medicare Advantage patients in the New York metro region.

While other carriers are similarly cutting doctors from their provider lists, United seems clearly head and shoulders above the rest.

Curiously, United is now involved with another aspect of Obamacare - the Obamacare website fix.

The government on Friday named a UnitedHealthGroup Inc. subsidiary as “general contractor” to oversee the troubled federal website designed to sign up Americans for health insurance under national health care reform.

When QSSI was awarded the contract to build the Obamacare Data Hub, questions of conflict of interest arose. In fact, when the QSSI purchase flew under the SEC radar, Sen. Orin Hatch raised the issue.

... He asked Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in an Oct. 19 letter for a full account of contractors hired to set up the national exchange and a list of administration officials who signed off on those awards.

“I am seeking more information about the contracts associated with the entities selected to build the federally facilitated exchange (FFE) and the federal data services hub that will support the FFE,” he wrote.

Hatch wants to know whether HHS reviewed UnitedHealth Group’s purchase of QSSI to determine whether it creates conflicts. 

Make no mistake, the insurers are using the highly popular Medicare Advantage Plans as a test case. If they can successfully eliminate doctors and products which they feel are too costly for them, their efforts will soon expand to all their insurance plans and networks. People have to be on high alert and call their friends, employers and both local and federal representatives.

They told me that if I voted for Mitt Romney, corporate entities would soon control all aspects of healthcare in the US ... and they were right.