A great big thank you to Obama should be forthcoming from 62 employees of Fallon Community Health Plan laid off last week - victims of the wonderful world of Obamacare.
Fallon, the state’s fourth largest health plan and one that has consistently earned high rankings from its more than 200,000 subscribers, made the cuts “to meet new challenges in an evolving health care marketplace,” according to CEO Patrick Hughes.
In addition to making life miserable for millions who lost their health care plans, the Affordable Care Act also puts a boatload of restrictions on insurers, including how much they can incur in administrative costs to serve their subscribers. (So if it takes a little longer for your insurance company to answer their phone and explain your bill, you’ll know why.)
A state-passed cost containment law approved last year also aims at squeezing both providers and insurers to keep costs and/or premiums low.
Hughes predicted in an interview with the Boston Business Journal last July that the combination of state and federal regulations would mean job cuts.
“There’s no light at the end of the tunnel,” he said at the time. “Or if there is a light it’s a train coming at us, fast.”
By September Harvard Pilgrim Health Care announced it was cutting 65 jobs.
Now Fallon is shrinking its workforce.
We now all know that when the president said, “If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan” it was an outright lie.
How about “If you like your job in the health care sector you can keep your job in the health care sector?”
Today, for at least 127 people who used to have good jobs, that too is a lie.
http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/opinion/editorials/2013/11/more_obamacare_victims#sthash.p6XvWnqF.dpuf
Fallon, the state’s fourth largest health plan and one that has consistently earned high rankings from its more than 200,000 subscribers, made the cuts “to meet new challenges in an evolving health care marketplace,” according to CEO Patrick Hughes.
In addition to making life miserable for millions who lost their health care plans, the Affordable Care Act also puts a boatload of restrictions on insurers, including how much they can incur in administrative costs to serve their subscribers. (So if it takes a little longer for your insurance company to answer their phone and explain your bill, you’ll know why.)
A state-passed cost containment law approved last year also aims at squeezing both providers and insurers to keep costs and/or premiums low.
Hughes predicted in an interview with the Boston Business Journal last July that the combination of state and federal regulations would mean job cuts.
“There’s no light at the end of the tunnel,” he said at the time. “Or if there is a light it’s a train coming at us, fast.”
By September Harvard Pilgrim Health Care announced it was cutting 65 jobs.
Now Fallon is shrinking its workforce.
We now all know that when the president said, “If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan” it was an outright lie.
How about “If you like your job in the health care sector you can keep your job in the health care sector?”
Today, for at least 127 people who used to have good jobs, that too is a lie.
http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/opinion/editorials/2013/11/more_obamacare_victims#sthash.p6XvWnqF.dpuf