Monday, November 03, 2008
Funny Stuff with LLNS Benefits for Retired Folks
Hi Frank,
I can't believe this has not already been noticed
but, I don't see it in the blog. I got this off of the
LLNS blog, obviously.... Could this also be done here????? If so
this is huge.
-Anonymous
LLNS is keeping us in the dark as much as possible on
health care options and costs. My wife and I are both Medicare-eligible, so we
received the Medicare-eligible packet on October 28. I donÕt know what options
employees are getting, or the under-65 retirees. I talked to an employee
friend, and he said the packet he received did not contain very much
information.
Our packet said that all Medicare-eligible retirees are
being dumped from the group health insurance plans effective next January 1.
LLNS is moving to a defined contribution health plan instead of a defined benefit
group plan for us Medicare retirees. What LLNS will provide us is a family
Health Reimbursement Account (HRA), into which they will contribute $2400 in
2009 for each Medicare insured person (usually self or self plus spouse). We
are responsible for purchasing individual Medicare supplement insurance or a
Medicare Advantage plan, and Medicare pharmaceutical insurance, from an
administrative management company ÒExtend HealthÓ which LLNS has an arrangement
with. We pay the premiums and get reimbursed from our HRA to the extent that
the funds are sufficient. If anything remains, we can use that for other health
care expenses (deductibles, copays etc.).
The biggest message in the packet is that Medicare
retirees MUST contact Extend Health to select and enroll in a medical plan. If
you do not make a plan selection with Extend Health your coverage will
terminate effective January 1, 2009. (That is a direct quote from the booklet.)
If a retiree is away from home, visiting relatives or on a tour, someone should
get the message to them.
There is an exception for retirees in Kaiser. They can
stay in the Kaiser group plan until sometime in mid-2009 when Extend Health is
anticipated to have made an arrangement with Kaiser to be able to broker
individual Medicare plans provided by Kaiser.
Other items from the packet Ð dental insurance stays
under Hewitt. Retirees can participate in the Vision plan Ð VSP Access Plan.
This is a discount program, not an insurance.
The information packet contains no information about the
individual Medicare plans or their costs. Having to purchase an individual plan
instead of being in a group plan, I strongly doubt that we will come out ahead.
The LLNS booklet says that we will receive a packet from
Extend Health during the week of November 3.
The LLNS booklet tells us that Extend Health has a web
site. They donÕt say what the web site is, but we can look it up.
I found, first, that Extend Health is a recent startup.
They raised $15 million in a second round of venture capital funding in August
2007. See Extend Health raises $15M for defined contribution health
plans, or just go to venturebeat.com and search their site for
ÒExtend HealthÓ.
The Extend Health web site is www.extendhealth.com.
Take a look at their Business pages, where they tell
their prospective business customers that they can control current health costs
and reduce corporate health liabilities and reporting obligations.
Extend Health is a combination of an administrative
management company and an insurance agency.
You can look at the individual plans they have on offer.
I found a few early facts. Medicare plans cover individuals. You select a plan
for you and your spouse separately. The premium depends on where you live and
increases with your age. It will take me a long time to go through the plans to
find one which is similar to the group coverage I have this year, so I can
compare cost.
Posted by Frank Young at 9:15 AM
============================
One
source of inequity is the following.
Practically all these retirees
retired
from LLNL while LLNL was managed by UC.
In effect,
they are really UC's retirees; not LLNS's retirees. Why should someone who
spent his/her career as a UC employee, and retired from UC before the contract
change; be considered any differently than someone who retired from one of the
UC campuses?
These are employees that spent their career working
for UC; not LLNS. Why can UC hand off their retiree medical benefits to LLNS?
Yes
- retiree medical benefits are a gift - and one isn't entitled to them in the
same way a working employee is. However, there does seem to be an element of
discrimination here - if one retires from a UC campus; UC takes care of your
retiree medical. But retired UC employees that worked for LLNL and not a campus
don't get the same generosity from UC; they get the generosity of UC's
successsor, LLNS.
People
have been warning on this blog for some time that LANS would eventually resort
to cutting back on retiree medical benefits. Many people did not want to
believe it and continued to trust tbe word of LANS.
Well, that
day has come for LLNL and will soon be coming for LANL. LANS wants to save
money and earn their "for-profit" fees from NNSA. They don't care
about a bunch of old retirees who didn't work for LANS/Bechtel, but worked
instead for UC. Who's UC? They don't seem to exist around these parts any
longer.
The plan is to squeeze the current and former employees
and gradually back away from the "substantially equivalent" BS that
DOE fed to the employees back in 2005. If they can get people to leave LANL in
disgust and reduce the size of the work force, so much the better as far as
LANS and NNSA are concerned.
If
DOE funds the retiree medical; then that's even less reason for cutting their
benefits to save cost. If the DOE is paying for retiree medical; then that
money should be paid for retiree medical and not used to shore up some other
LANS / LLNS shortfall.
Whoa! " Washington Savannah River Co., the former management and operations contractor for the Savannah River, S.C., nuclear site, has agreed to pay the federal government $2.4 million to resolve allegations of fraud. The U.S. Justice Department alleged that the company, owned by URS Corp., failed to disclose substantial projected increases in required pension fund contributions during 2003 contract negotiations. As part of the settlement, the contractor will withdraw claims for an additional $35.6 million for the Department of Energy to cover the rise in its pension costs. The Department of Justice said that after the 2005 contract began Washington Savannah River Co. sought and received a $1.2 million adjustment to the contract to cover what DOE believed were unexpected increases in required pension funding. But as the contract period progressed, the pension fund contributions continued to rise. The government alleged the contractor's actuarial had predicted the increased contributions."