Maintaining Quality & Affordable Insurance
When you retired, you were no longer covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Then what protections do you have now?
State law governs your right to health insurance when you retire, 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 retired, you were no longer covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Then what protections do you have now?
State law governs your right to health insurance when you retire, 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 retired teachers 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 retired teachers who are not eligible for Medicare and typically experience relatively higher costs in terms of premiums as well as out-of-pocket expenses.
Become a Mass Retirees Subscriber Today!
Six Issues of The Voice for Just $25.
The Ongoing Fight Against Cost Shifting
When it comes to affordability, Mass Retirees has been engaged in an ongoing fight to curtail local officials from unilaterally shifting more and more healthcare costs onto retired teachers. For those of you, enrolled with the state GIC (Group Insurance Commission), Mass Retirees is 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 retired teachers, like you, from a pending increase in the percent of the insurance premium that must be paid.
Mass Retirees is 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 retired teachers currently
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 Retirees has been promoting a proposal that calls for enrolling non-Medicare retirees, age 65 or over, into Medicare. It’s proven It’s proven successful in communities where it’s been implemented, reducing costs for many of the non-Medicare retired teachers 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 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 the work that we are doing on behalf of retired teachers and all public retirees on health insurance. There’s much more.
But we can’t continue our efforts without your support. We need you to help us help you.