Retiree Medical

This post is about the retiree health plan of a certain nameless company that I retired from.  Some of the more clever of you may be able to piece the puzzle together and figure out which one, but that can't be helped.  My readers are clever.  It's not my fault.

Anyway, this is not intended to be a factual analysis; it's just my best understanding of some conversations and things I think I remember, but who knows, I could be messed up.  That's not all that important.  The important thing is that I did not mention Farmers any specific company and I confessed up front that I don't know what I'm talking about, so no one can feel disparaged or defamed, I'm pretty sure.

The way I think it used to work is that retirees got the same deal as employees.  The company would subsidize their health insurance the same way they do current employees, paying something like two thirds of the premium, and retireees could stay in the program and pay what they paid while they were working.  That's a pretty substantial benefit.  Post-retirement benefits were never really guaranteed though, and one day a few years ago, they changed them.

Here's how it works now, if I remember correctly, from the conversation I had today.  After you leave the company, you can sign onto a plan for retirees, as long as you had coverage when you were working and then continuously maintained coverage.  However, the Zurich benefits specialist I talked to told me that COBRA is better coverage for cheaper, even though COBRA is not cheap at all.  So if you pay COBRA for 18 months and that runs out, you can join their worse and more expensive plan.

The good thing is that they set aside some money for me to help pay for that plan, if it comes to that.  Unfortunately, after 11 years at the company, I think I have enough money designated for me to pay for maybe 6 months.

That is not a substantial benefit.  I almost laughed when I realized how it works, especially with the Zurich representative assuring me that the plan sucks.  (She didn't say that, but she might as well have.)  I suppose that if you retire at 63 and a half or 64, it helps you get to Medicare, but the plan has a $3,000 deductible, so even then it's going to cost you.

I wonder if someone at Zurich feels bad that they couldn't come up with a way to give people less.

After you reach age 65, they have another plan.  I haven't read about it yet, but I bet it's really excellent.