A double whammy for the elderly from Obama care

1) "Citing health overhaul, AARP hikes employee costs"

AARP's endorsement helped secure passage of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. Now the seniors' lobby is telling its employees their insurance costs will rise partly as a result of the law.
In an e-mail to employees, AARP says health care premiums will increase by 8 percent to 13 percent next year because of rapidly rising medical costs.
And AARP adds that it's changing copayments and deductibles to avoid a 40 percent tax on high-cost health plans that takes effect in 2018 under the law. Aerospace giant Boeing also has cited the tax in asking its workers to pay more. Shifting costs to employees lowers the value of a health care plan and acts like an escape hatch from the tax. . . .

Thanks to Tony Troglio for this link.

2) Medicare cuts

The U.S. Senate’s failure to act before today’s 21 percent Medicare physician payment cut has put seniors at grave risk of reduced access to health care and choice of physician.

“The Senate had over a year to repeal the flawed formula that causes the annual payment cut and instead they abandoned America’s seniors, making them collateral damage to their procedural games,” said AMA President J. James Rohack, M.D. “Physicians are outraged because the cut, combined with the continued instability in the system, will force them to make difficult practice changes including limiting the number of Medicare patients they can treat.”

The reason for pointing this out is that it is interesting to see Democrats argue how they are the ones to protect Medicare and that these arbitrary cuts in payments will only remove waste and inefficiency.