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Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Retirees Beware - Medical Benefits for Life Won't Be There

Have you taken or are you considering taking early retirement because your company is guaranteeing medical benefits for life?

Well, the story of Evo Alexandre should be instructive for you:

Evo Alexandre of Moraga California,72, took early retirement in 1986 from Kaiser Aluminum Corp. The company gave him an incentive: guaranteed medical insurance for life.
But 2 years ago Kaiser Aluminum, filed for bankruptcy and told salaried retirees like Alexandre that they would need to pay $130 per person per month to retain their benefits. They had no choice to go along. Then, on Jan. 1, 2004 Kaiser doubled the premium to $522 per couple per month. That comes to $6,300 per year. Two weeks later, the company asked a bankruptcy court to let it terminate medical benefits for all its retirees, salaried and nonsalaried alike, and it did so, effective May 31.

That's free to zip, zilch in less than 20 years. No health insurance.

What will retirees do if their company defaults on its promise? What can they do? Medicare will not help.

According to the Employee Benefits Research Institute, a Washington D.C. nonprofit, a person who is 55 today will need:

  • $151,000 in cash to cover gaps in Medicare coverage if he/she lives til 80
  • $330,000 in cash to cover gaps in Medicare coverage if he/she lives til 90
  • $0.5 million dollars in cash to cover the gaps if he/she lives til 100

Before its too late:

  1. lobby our irresponsible leaders to make health care insurance a national priority and explore ways to guarantee health insurance for all - if we can put a man on the moon, can't we have a hospital bed for him too?
  2. lobby to let retirees cash out medical benefits and take it with them that way corporations can't plead mercy before courts when they have gone bankrupt

Read more: "Retiree Benefits Dwindling" by Carolyn Said