Early retiree Richard Rouse told federal officials Tuesday he would like to know that his former employers’ health plan for retirees is stable and won’t be raising his $500 monthly premiums.
CHICAGO (AP) — Early retiree Richard Rouse told federal officials Tuesday he would like to know that his former employers’ health plan for retirees is stable and won’t be raising his $500 monthly premiums.
"A lot of predictions show that in January things are going to go up quite a lot," Rouse, 62, said at a Chicago senior center after U.S. Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Howard Koh spoke about the new national health law, including subsidies for employers to help cover retirees’ medical claims.
In Illinois, 130 employers were approved for federal subsidies, the federal government announced Tuesday.
Koh said the law provides $5 billion to help employers maintain coverage for early retirees like Rouse, who are 55 and older but not yet eligible for Medicare. The subsidies are a bridge until other provisions of the health care law come online in 2014, he said.
Koh fielded senior citizens’ questions on long-term care, Medicare and states’ ability to regulate premium rate increases. And because he was speaking at a senior center that’s part of a 3-year-old gay community center complex, Koh talked about new rules requiring nearly all hospitals to let same-sex partners have visiting rights and help make medical decisions. The draft rules are not part of the health care law, but are an initiative of President Barack Obama.
Koh’s visit to the John Baran Senior Center at Chicago’s Center on Halsted was part of a push by the Obama administration to address older people’s mistrust of the new health care law. Some polls show a higher percentage of seniors opposing the law compared to the population as a whole.
Seniors voiced impatience. Noting that Koh said the law would close the Medicare prescription drug coverage gap, often known as the "doughnut hole," by 2020, Jim Henritze, 70, of Chicago said: "Half of these people will be dead by then."
The new law, known as the Affordable Care Act, will mean free preventive care for the nearly 2 million Medicare enrollees in Illinois, Koh said. The law provides people on Medicare with free annual physicals starting next year, along with free mammograms and certain colon cancer tests.
And, nationally, more than 1 million Medicare enrollees have received tax-free $250 rebate checks to help them with prescription drug costs, including 41,000 seniors in Illinois, Koh said.
The newly announced early retiree subsidies will pay 80 percent of medical claims between $15,000 and $90,000, a help to employers trying to maintain affordable coverage for high-cost retirees.
The 130 Illinois employers approved for early retiree subsidies include the cities of Chicago, Bloomington, Peoria and Decatur, according Tuesday’s announcement. Illinois-based companies include Abbott Laboratories, McDonald’s Inc., Boeing Co., Sara Lee Corp. and Deere & Co.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.
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