State retirees caught off guard by prescription coverage changes

State retirees first received news of the state changing their prescription coverage last month (“Maryland government retirees in an uproar over looming change to prescription drug coverage,” June 20). However, the O’Malley administration made the decision to shift retirees to Medicare Part Din 2011, and the recent General Assembly advanced this decision by six months (It’s now set to take effect Jan 1, instead of July 2019). Were retirees ever informed of these two events?

As far as I know, retirees current and past were never informed of the O’Malley decision nor was it ever contested by the General Assemblies since then. Furthermore, state retirees receive a plan description book annually describing their benefits. I don’t recall any annual warnings about this change in prescription coverage in that booklet. Even if the effective date wasn’t advanced by the 2018 representative, there should have a been an annual warning of this critical upcoming change to coverage.

With all of the hue and cry from Democrats in Congress, our legislature and our present Attorney General Brian Frosh — who are all more concerned with Obamacare being stripped of pre-existing conditions clauses nationally — no attention was given to retaining and supporting this very important coverage for their own retirees. Not only that, state employees are not losing their stateprovided prescription coverage.

I hope that state retirees have a long memory at the ballot box booth of how much our General Assembly Democrats and senior staffs care about state employees’ health plans after they retire. If the state is dropping its prescription coverage for this group, increasing costs for retirees, our Democratic leadership can only be considering how to convince retirees to drop their health coverage to flounder in post-Obamacare health world. Their next target will be state employee health benefits.