Fox News’ Hasselbeck: Obamacare is hurting ‘many’ elderly pregnant women

Fox News host Elisabeth Hasselbeck suggested on Monday that pregnant women 65-years-old and older were losing their doctors because of President Barack Obama health care reform law.

In a segment titled “Who’s Ruining the Economy Now?” Fox Business host Stuart Varney announced that the president was not going to be able to keep the promise that people could keep their doctors because “United Healthcare has just dropped — we don’t know exactly how many — but thousands of doctors have been dropped from United Heathcare’s Medicare Advantage program.”
Conservative media outlets like The Washington Times have blamed United Healthcare’s decision on the Affordable Care Act.
“That leaves hundreds of thousands of patients without the doctor that they’ve had for many many years,” Varney added. “We don’t know how many thousands have been dropped, but thousands have been dropped. What about their patients? What about the people who used to have this doctor who now no longer have this doctor? Broken promise.”
“And many of those people are women who are expecting babies and who may just have a real relationship with their physician and want to see the same doctor deliver possibly their second child,” Hasselbeck opined. “And they are now left in the dark in a time that they feeling quite vulnerable.”
“Most of them are elderly,” Varney pointed out.
Medicare Advantage is a type of Medicare offered by private companies to people over 65 years of age. Medicare Advantage covers traditional Medicare plus additional services, but customers must pay a premium.
It’s not clear how many women over the age of 65 are pregnant, but United Healthcare does offer maternity coverage to Medicare Advantage customers.
Watch this video from Fox News’ Fox & Friends, broadcast Nov. 18, 2013.

David Edwards has served as an editor at Raw Story since 2006. His work can also be found at Crooks & Liars, and he's also been published at The BRAD BLOG. He came to Raw Story after working as a network manager for the state of North Carolina and as as engineer developing enterprise resource planning software. Follow him on Twitter at @DavidEdwards.