EEOC clears path for reduced retiree benefits

December 27, 2007

Given the costs of healthcare in this country, I suppose this was inevitable.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Wednesday that employers could reduce or eliminate health benefits for retirees when they turn 65 and become eligible for Medicare.

The policy, set forth in a new regulation, allows employers to establish two classes of retirees, with more comprehensive benefits for those under 65 and more limited benefits — or none at all — for those older.

More than 10 million retirees rely on employer-sponsored health plans as a primary source of coverage or as a supplement to Medicare, and Naomi C. Earp, the commission’s chairwoman, said, “This rule will help employers continue to voluntarily provide and maintain these critically important health benefits.” […]

Because of the rising cost of health care and the increased life expectancy of workers, the commission said, many employers refuse to provide retiree health benefits or even to negotiate on the issue.

An EEOC lawyer noted that many employers and labor unions had told the panel that “if they had to provide identical benefits for retirees under 65 and over 65, they would just drop retiree health benefits altogether for both groups.”

Under the new rules, an employer can choose to provide retiree health benefits “only to those retirees who are not yet eligible for Medicare.” Likewise, the rule says, retiree health benefits can be “altered, reduced or eliminated” when a retiree becomes eligible for Medicare.

The proverbial writing is on the wall.

Indeed, I think John Cole got this just right.

I understand the reasoning for this — they are trying to find ways to keep the most people covered possible during a time of rising health costs, and pushing those over the age of 65 off on the government (translation: you and me) allows them to spend resources on those still working for them and those who can’t be pushed off on the government.

This is just another piece of evidence to me that we will be moving to single-payer in the next decade or so, simply because big business wants this (and would argue they need it) in order to survive. And we will end up dragging Red State and NRO along as they scream “socialized medicine” the whole way. At this point, it almost has a feel of inevitability about it. I don’t wonder if we will have single-payer, I wonder how bad our special interest groups will manage to screw up the implementation.

Agreed. If we want businesses to drive the economy and we want businesses to provide benefits to Americans, something’s going to give. I suspect it’ll be the latter.

December 27, 2007 at 3:13 pm

Health care is a media issue, and the media is bought and paid for.

Since most Americans get all their information from sources which only stand to benefit from a for-profit health system, I wonder how much the average American will hear about the success of national health care in every other industrialized nation? And of course what they do hear will be “balanced” reports where some think tank troll gets to foist off their BS about how horrible socialized medicine is in country XYZ. One of course will notice the similarity between that and the way the media allowed climate change “skeptics” to insert their BS for decades, thus misinforming everyone under the banner of “fairness”, and not coincidentally fellating major advertisers.

It will take a person of character and stamina in the whitehouse to beat back the wolves who will desperately try to keep their jaws around our collective necks.

Wal-Mart’s been pushing their people to opt for Medicaid for a while now. And why not? Single payer is the way to go. Companies should not have to provide health insurance for their workers. Let the government do it for all people so companies can focus on whatever it is they do. Except health insurance companies. Screw them.

And how soon until the same interests who have worked so hard to keep SCHIP from being expanded, (Heaven forbid we provide coverage to some adults who have a tiny bit more money than the destitute) come for Medicare? After all, if supporting a family of four on, say, $50,000 is considered well off, can’t these people decide that 65 isn’t very old after all?

To borrow a cliche oft-used at Fark.com: Step 1 – create conditions that make it so businesses no longer are or feel they are responsible for providing any quality health coverage. Step 2 – scale back or eliminate the government program that these poor souls are now relying upon. Step 3 – profit?

One more thing. The Commonwealth Fund issued a report stating that guaranteed health coverage for all, plus a combination of other policy changes would reduce government spending by $1.5 TRILLION. How many more wars would we be able to afford in that case?

It can be all well and good except what the Corporatists really want is for American Workers to be denied the benefits they earned and force them into private savings/personal savings accounts which means most won’t be able to afford the healthcare they need. The Cheney types while opposing “socialized” medicine hypocritically continue getting their taxpayer benefits. The U.S. is owned and controlled by Evil.

Chief@3
I think Cole has it right.

The GOP shut down the government trying to cut Medicare. Clinton let it happen.
GOP knuckled under when they thought for just a moment. We’ve just suggested cutting benefits to SENIORS! What the heck were we thnking?

End of shutdown.
Enter Medicare part D. They EXPANDED it even though its current structure will financially kill us.

The GOP is now wary of the FOURTH rail: Medicare.

Will George try to stop this because he insists private health care is what everyone should be on.
The head butting of CIGNA backed presidents and seniors backed Congress is fun to watch. My bet is on the seniors, unless Diebold makes seniors’ voting power irrelevant.

All wingnuts try to remember that employer paid health care is the result of WWII era regulations restricting wage increases. So employers used health-care benefits (and day care, etc.) to lure employees when they couldn’t pay them more.

So employer-based health care is actually a government regulation caused distortion of the Free Market.

As for going to single-payer, everybody knows that Medicare has far lower administrative costs than private insurers, and everybody knows that when it comes to insurance, the larger the pool your are in, the lower the permimums can be. There is hardly a larger pool possible than all 300,000,000 Americans.

After working 35 years and giving up thousands of dollars in pay that we would have recieved in place of insurance which in effect we paid for they want to take our benfits away because we turn 65. An what will happen to the dependents that are covered who are not 65.I hope the demsstep up to the plate and stop this. This is what we get becaused you voted for the village idiot.

But note that all of the major candidates of both parties are pushing some form of mandatory health insurance (either a group plan through employers OR an individual plan if you’re not eligible for a group).

In short, make the 40-50 milllion UNinsured buy insurance.

At that point, everybody is in an insured health plan offered by Blue Cross, Cigna, Aetna, United Health Care, etc.

But wait a minute…

Isn’t the CURRENT problem the fact that all of the INSURED folks are covered by one of the big, for-profit, commercial insurance companies/HMO’s???

How will turning the REST of the people over to the same companies solve the problem?

Will they suddenly change the way they operate?

Health care should be removed from the for-profit sector and placed in the not-for-profit sector. Let the politicians fight over Government vs Non-Government management.

But…but…but what about all those private insur. co employees. They will be without jobs…unemployed all 1-2000 of them. Think of the employees.

What bullshit. Let the billions in profits from the private ins cos pay for retraining them etc.
Nothing should stand in the way of a national single payer NOT FOR PROFIT health care system. Was it Obama who came up with that illogical excuse to ‘phase in’ a new health care system? We could have this plan running smoothly within 3mos. Private ins co have been feasting at the table for decades and should no longer even be allowed to sit in on the discussion. I’m certain the fed gov could employee most of them in the operation of the national plan. If you are one of the few who haven’t seen the movie/documentary “Sicko” you owe it to yourself to see what this whole issue is really about. As hard as they tried even the private ins groups could find nothing wrong in this film.. These groups have successfully bribed our congress with large campaign contributions for decades to prevent a national health care system for purely profit motives and not the welfare of the citizens. Money is their only influence and they have 5 lobbyists for every congress person to bribe the hell out of them. That bribe money comes from the huge profits they have made off of us. None of this would be necessary unless it took all of this to keep them in power…and it does. Time it ends and I can’t wait for all the benefits all Americans will share from a new health care system.

It comes back again to campaign finance reform. Our system is one of legalized bribery. People look down on Bhutto because she was accused of corruption? People deride 3rd world countries because of endemic corruption? Our system has institutionalized corruption at its very core! Our health care idiocy is only one of a myriad ways in which that manifests. We have to take the money out of politics, or this sort of thing will go on and on and on. Until then, our congresspeople (especially in the house of reps, who have to run every 2 years) will spend more of their time shilling than learning what they should know to make the right decisions to run the country wisely.

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Health care is the biggest scam in America and that’s why it costs so much. Just look at Tenet. They knowingly scammed millions by performing heart surgery on healthy patients. During Bush’s administration as Governor of Texas only about three doctors were ever investigated by the state medical board. All other complaints were just filed or thrown away. The obscene levels of profit these hospitals, insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies rake in while killing patients right and left is an outrage. In addition, the importation of incompetent foreign physicians on green cards and the spewing of so called medical assistants from former secretarial schools adds to the problem. Finally you have companies like Columbia Health Care who scam millions from Medicare and Medicaid by fraud. Nobody who isn’t capable of graduating from Harvard Medical College with a four year degree should be allowed to have anything to do with medicine, and there needs to be strong ethical training and oversight. Fraud and malpractice need to be punished by criminal sentences. In short, America needs to flush the medical toilet.

I think this issue (retiree health insurance benefits) is an odd one. My father was in an assisted living situtaion a few years back, and on Medicare. He had two retiree insurance coverages in place (from two serial careers). At one point (I was handling the finances at that time) I had him drop one of the private coverages because the retirement plan was going to charge him $60/month, and all he was going to get out of it was maybee $300 in coverage annually (after deductibles and coordination of benefits).
The retirement plans already have the right to charge their participants a greater percentage of the cost so what’s the need for this rule change?
It seems to me that once a person qualifies for Medicare, the whole landscape changes. But maybe my experience is limited … maybe my father is lucky to have providers that don’t charge Medicare patients a huge differential over the Medicare approved rates … but I thought that was regulated. Maybe it varies state by state?
Anyone else have some direct experience?

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