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Moen retirees to lose health care insurance
Chronicle Telegram ^ | 3/26/13 | Steve Fogarty

Posted on 03/26/2013 5:27:46 AM PDT by EBH

Judy Starcovic was one of nearly 230 Moen Inc. retirees who opened letters last week informing them their company-provided health care insurance will end as of Jan. 1, 2014.

“I was there 35 years and they told me I had health care with them,” Starcovic, 71, said Monday.

The letter, which was signed by Moen President David Lingafelter, informed retirees that as of Jan. 1, Moen will no longer offer health care insurance to approximately 440 retirees in the U.S., including the almost 230 who live in Northeast Ohio and the rest of the state, according to Robyn Hill, Moen vice president of human resources.

Hill cited the cost of insurance, coupled with adapting the company’s health care to conform to changes mandated by the health care reform bill for its current workers as the reason for the change. Those moves include extending the coverage to age 26 for dependents and paying 100 percent coverage for birth control.

(Excerpt) Read more at chronicle.northcoastnow.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: healthcare; healthinsurance; obamacare
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To: Adder

Wisconsin voted for Obama. I live in Cailifornia and will be taxed to support millions of dependents, many who should be forcefully deported. Choices, or until we leave.

Enjoy.


41 posted on 03/26/2013 8:12:46 AM PDT by wac3rd (Somewhere in Hell, Ted Kennedy snickers....)
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To: Adder
I’m sorry: these people made a contract with Moen and Moen with them. Moen is breaking that contract with the blessing of the feds. And that is just wrong

While you may very well be correct, I read nothing about a contract. When there are contracts, companies grandfather retiree plans. My company did that back around 2000.

We've gone from an world of pensions, anniversary gifts and retiree health insurance to a world of 401k's, certificates and booklets on Medicare.

I'd bet my house that Moen's biggest financial issue right now is the stupid-low interest rates and not health insurance costs.
42 posted on 03/26/2013 8:14:14 AM PDT by whattajoke (Let's keep Conservatism real.)
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To: G Larry

The whole country is swirling around the toilet bowl now. It won’t take much longer to go down the drain.


43 posted on 03/26/2013 8:59:28 AM PDT by TexasRepublic (Socialism is the gospel of envy and the religion of thieves)
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To: EBH
Now seniors will clamor for single payer.
44 posted on 03/26/2013 9:09:12 AM PDT by 1010RD (First, Do No Harm)
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To: napscoordinator
With only 440 retirees affected, I don’t see why they can’t continue the coverage.

Well, I guess you have neverbeen charge to find health insurance for a company. Our tiny company say our group healthcare costs double and triple EACH year for the 10 years before we finaly discontinued the whole plan. Every year our co-pays went up and our coverage went down and the costs for all this skyrocketed. Finally, we turned everybody over to an independent broker. They each have their own policy which they pay for themselves. We reimbursed the employees for 50% of the cost of the new insurance via increased wages. Those who were uninsurable privately for one reason, or another, picked up a state policy (a Wisconsin benefit). We are totally out of it.

45 posted on 03/26/2013 9:27:41 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
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To: napscoordinator
With only 440 retirees affected, I don’t see why they can’t continue the coverage.

Well, I guess you have neverbeen charge to find health insurance for a company. Our tiny company say our group healthcare costs double and triple EACH year for the 10 years before we finaly discontinued the whole plan. Every year our co-pays went up and our coverage went down and the costs for all this skyrocketed. Finally, we turned everybody over to an independent broker. They each have their own policy which they pay for themselves. We reimbursed the employees for 50% of the cost of the new insurance via increased wages. Those who were uninsurable privately for one reason, or another, picked up a state policy (a Wisconsin benefit). We are totally out of it.

46 posted on 03/26/2013 9:27:42 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
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To: EBH

“I was there 35 years and they told me I had health care with them,” Starcovic, 71, said Monday.”

That’s the beauty of Obamacare. The morons won’t understand that the government caused this, instead they will blame the evil corporations and demand that the government take further action to protect them from the borgoise!


47 posted on 03/26/2013 9:53:34 AM PDT by CSM (Keeper of the Dave Ramsey Ping list. FReepmail me if you want your beeber stuned.)
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To: afraidfortherepublic; napscoordinator
With only 440 retirees affected, I don’t see why they can’t continue the coverage.

The older you are, the more expensive your heatlh care and therefore health insurance is. When you have a concentrated pool of older folks, the claims experience and risk exposure never ever gets better. It gets worse every year.

Actuaries cringe at retiree plans. They are unsustainable in the private space. I have consulted with several very large, privately owned conservative firms that have done everything they can to weasel their ways out of retiree benefits. You can't even begin to imagine. Death panels in PPACA? Private firms wish that were true.

I've been privy to execs sitting around openly hoping for life support retirees to die. With a claims pool of 100 or so, that one person's $3,000,000 annual claims were driving everone's costs up to unheard of levels - and the company was paying for them.

No company will carry retiree health benefits in 20 years. None.
48 posted on 03/26/2013 9:57:26 AM PDT by whattajoke (Let's keep Conservatism real.)
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To: G Larry

Guess they are getting showered with good news, eh?


49 posted on 03/26/2013 9:58:47 AM PDT by sauropod (I will not comply)
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To: EBH
“I was there 35 years and they told me I had health care with them,” Judy Starcovic, 71, said Monday.

Did you vote for Obama, Judy? How many of your friends did? Of course, you'll still have Libs like my brother who thinks that companies are using Obamacare's costs as an "excuse" to get rid of health coverage to become even more profitable, and that they should be forced to keep everyone covered no matter what the cost.

50 posted on 03/26/2013 10:07:52 AM PDT by Opinionated Blowhard ("When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.")
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To: alloysteel
[Time is coming when the only half-way adequate health will either be self-treatment, or contacting an underground or overseas operation.]

I think we will see private hospital ships cruising off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts offering major surgery, cancer treatment, joint replacement, etc. to patients with cash. If this market grows and becomes competitive it might actually bring down health care fees and prices back on the beach.

51 posted on 03/26/2013 11:25:01 AM PDT by Brad from Tennessee (A politician can't give you anything he hasn't first stolen from you.)
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To: alloysteel

People voted for democrats after Pelosi said “We have to pass it to see what’s in it.” To me, that says a lot about democrat voters.


52 posted on 03/26/2013 12:13:00 PM PDT by Terry Mross (This country will fail to exist in my lifetime. And I'm gettin' up there in age.)
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To: Iron Munro

“We found out that it is perfectly legal for a company to promise a retirement benefit your whole working life then end it the week before you retire.”
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

In ‘82 I left a job with a company I had worked for for just over ten years. I left because they were in receivership and they wanted me to relocate hundreds of miles from my current location. I refused and took a job with a division that the company had sold off a few months earlier and after a few more months I started my own little business. A year or so later they notified me that the retirement plan in which I was “fully vested” was being closed out and a new one started. Those who met some unstated arbitrary length of service under the plan were to keep their vested plan and file for retirement when they reached the qualifying age. Those who, like me, fell below the unstated length of service were to be given an immediate lump sum payout and would have no further benefits. With ten years I got just over $1200. dollars! That amounted to about five cents for every hour I had worked for the company. A coworker who had worked 26 years for the company got a letter telling him that he could draw his expected retirement benefit when he reached the age to qualify. He developed cancer in his fifties and contacted the company to tell them he was dying and asked if he could draw some kind of lump sum settlement. He was told that he could not do so and there would be ZERO benefits for his survivors! In other words my little lump sum for ten years was infinitely larger than his zero for 26 years.


53 posted on 03/26/2013 12:51:30 PM PDT by RipSawyer (I was born on Earth, what planet is this?)
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To: G Larry

Proved to be a “drain” on resources.....
**************************************************
Yes, their accountants and actuaries told them it was time to pull the plug on their retirees’ healthcare.


54 posted on 03/26/2013 12:57:15 PM PDT by House Atreides
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To: afraidfortherepublic
Company provided healthcare insurance for Medicare recipients is, functionally, add on insurance. This woman will have to replace it with AARP or some such plan. The difference is it will be Out of pocket expense instead of paid up. If she declined Medicare B when she started Medicare, she will have a large hole to fill.
55 posted on 03/26/2013 1:57:00 PM PDT by hinckley buzzard
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To: Mr. K
Stay healthy! Don’t want to have the government doing a cost-benefit analysis .....

Oh, that's a standard benefit .... that they contract out to Soylent Corporation .... where the blue pills come from, too, btw, since True Apothecary Pharmaceuticals is Soylent's wholly-owned sub.

56 posted on 03/26/2013 1:57:55 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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To: old and tired
I'll bet your a retired govt worker, with the "let them eat cake" attitude...

I find govt workers the least sympathetic when it comes to others suffering...

just as long as you got yours, right?

57 posted on 03/26/2013 7:14:14 PM PDT by cherry
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To: Wurlitzer

another govt retiree.....save it...


58 posted on 03/26/2013 7:14:58 PM PDT by cherry
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To: BipolarBob

“Which highlights the difference between legal and moral. “

Is it ‘moral’ to have socialized medicine in the form of medicare/medicaid shift the cost of insurance to private companies - forcing costs to skyrocket to some wildly unpredictable future level, and then expect a private business to simply ‘eat’ the cost, no matter what it is?


59 posted on 03/26/2013 7:26:52 PM PDT by RFEngineer
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To: afraidfortherepublic
Only the teachers seem to be still on 100% reimbursement.

No kidding. I remember when the teachers here howled at having their annual BCBS deductibles doubled (from $25 to $50). You'd think they had been condemned to death.

60 posted on 03/27/2013 12:30:23 AM PDT by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing)
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