Reducing healthcare benefits for pre-medicare OPERS members could spell disaster
Thank you for exposing the real consequences in the Dec. 29 article “Problems plague OPERS new health plan.”
The pre-medicare group paid into the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System fund for decades only to have the benefits prematurely ended. Reducing healthcare for pre-medicare employees will have disastrous consequences. OPERS members must count on only needing preventative care.
The pre-medicare group of 35,000 employees watched Powerpoint slides on addressing increasing costs. Understandable. However, OPERS is one of the best-run pensions in the country. They implement best practices on fund management and invest employee funds with success. OPERS is transparent.
The right thing to do was to grandfather in our finite group who retired expecting group healthcare benefits. OPERS financials clearly allowed for this action and made this change without needing the state legislature’s approval.
OPERS could have saved money by raising our group’s premiums and reducing some health care benefits until reaching Medicare. Instead, a “vote” was held that included our group of 35,000 and the 1,000,000+ members already on Medicare.
We all know how that went.
Adding insult to injury, administrator Via Benefits has made the process chaotic.
Endless waits for assistance with questions not answered. Now our group will need to be tech-savvy, uploading, scanning and downloading paperwork to get reimbursed for every dollar spent. Retirees with lower incomes must have enough money to pay upfront and be reimbursed.
Many OPERS retirees cannot afford this change. They cannot handle the administrative bureaucracy. They worked hard for decades, counting on bridging the gap to Medicare. And now, like so many others, they are one illness or hospitalization away from disaster.
Barb Seckler, Columbus