When Your Former Employer Is On Life-Support...
Talk about rocking the health care world -- at least as it pertains to retirees. General Motors, which has 100,000 salaried retirees and their dependents on its health care rolls, is dumping them and the $3.3 billion a year it costs the company to provide them with insurance.
In lieu of covering them under the GM health plan, the retirees will get an additional $300 a month tacked onto their pension payments to use toward buying health care -- $3,600 a year to buy insurance that costs a whole lot more than that. They can, however, sign up for Medicare plans starting this week, which is a month earlier than Medicare's enrollment for everyone else.
As a story in the Detroit Free Press noted, "Given costs of the Medicare drug plans, many retirees will wind up paying much more than $300 a month."
(Here's a Q&A on the changes from GM and a letter the company sent its employees.)
With other major companies -- to say nothing of states and localities -- feeling a whole lot of fiscal pressure over retiree health care coverage, it brings up the old saw about GM: Is what's good for General Motors good for the country?
Written and compiled by staff writers and editors, GOVERNING View is an on-the-ground, and sometimes behind-the-scenes, look at the topics we're covering in print and online. From notes on what's up in statehouses, county courthouses and city halls, to encounters with people, places and things, GOVERNING View is a window into the side of state and local government you don't always see.
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