Maintaining Quality & Affordable Insurance
When you retire, state law governs your right to health insurance, specifically Chapter 32B of the General Laws. While you must be provided with health insurance, the insurance plans themselves, including their coverage and benefits, can change. It would not be surprising that you have experienced this since you retired.
Maintaining Quality & Affordable Insurance
When you retire, state law governs your right to health insurance, specifically Chapter 32B of the General Laws. While you must be provided with health insurance, the insurance plans themselves, including their coverage and benefits, can change. It would not be surprising that you have experienced this since you retired.
For over five decades, Mass Retirees has led the fight to ensure local retirees and their families have access to excellent health insurance plans that offer robust benefits and remain affordable. Affordability is of utmost concern to us, particularly for those retirees who are not eligible for Medicare and typically experience relatively higher costs in terms of premiums as well as out-of-pocket expenses.
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Ongoing Fight Against Cost Shifting
When it comes to affordability,Mass Retireeshas been engaged in an ongoing fight to curtail local officials from unilaterally shifting more and more healthcare costs onto their retirees. For those of you, enrolled with the state GIC (Group Insurance Commission),Mass Retireesis focused on preventing that state agency from initiating similar shifts.
Therefore, our efforts are wide ranging from the State House to city or town hall. Recently we testified before the Joint Public Service Committee on our legislation that protects current retirees, like you, from a pending increase in the percent of the insurance premium that you must paid.
Mass Retireesis also taking the lead to prevent a proposal receiving any acceptance locally, that would replace your group insurance plans with an individual voucher program. Such a program would eliminate certain basic rights, that retirees currently have in connection with their insurance.
We are not only defending against cost shifts and other attacks to your hard earned benefits but also offering reasonable solutions that help mitigate costs without harming retirees. Mass Retireeshas been promoting a proposal that calls for enrolling non-Medicare retirees, age 65 or over, into Medicare. It’s proven successful in communities where it’s been implemented, reducing costs for many of the non-Medicare retirees who we spoke about earlier.
Some of you may be receiving your insurance in conjunction with a PEC (Public Employee Committee (PEC) Agreement that the PEC retiree designee, appointed by us, and union representatives have negotiated with local officials. Currently there are over 180 PEC retiree designees with whom we work on a myriad of local insurance issues, including those discussed here.
Help Us to Help You
This is just a sampling of some of the work on health insurance that we are doing for local retirees and all public retirees. There’s much more .
But we can’t continue our efforts without your support. We need you to help us help you!