August 11th, 2009

Reports the Philadelphia Inquirer:

The region’s most fragile and impoverished elderly citizens will lose some of their health insurance in January when Independence Blue Cross stops offering two plans catering to the poor.

Independence Blue Cross, the region’s largest health insurer, began sending letters last week to the 36,000 subscribers in the two programs, Keystone 65 Complete and Keystone 65 Value.

The company says that starting Jan. 1, it can no longer afford to offer these programs because of cutbacks in federal funding for Medicare.

Advocates for the elderly are bracing themselves for an onslaught of calls as elderly subscribers receive the letters and begin to worry about access to their same doctors, drugs, hospitals, and pharmacists.

“It’s upsetting,” said Alissa Eden Halperin, senior attorney and deputy director of policy advocacy for the Pennsylvania Health Law Project.

“Here you have IBC, which is a nonprofit, which has a charitable mission, significant tax breaks, and a tremendous surplus, and it’s dropping its poor-people plan,” she said.

Stephen Fera, Independence Blue Cross’ vice president of government programs, agrees that it is upsetting. He described the decision not to renew these policies as “extraordinarily difficult.”

…

In February, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told insurers to expect federal reimbursement cutbacks in the range of 4 percent for Medicare Advantage plans.

“This is a business decision that plans are going to have to take into consideration,” said Lorraine Ryan, a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokeswoman, in Philadelphia.

Read more at the Inquirer.