LORAIN ? 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.
Moen also eliminated two of three insurance plans offered to employees in favor of a higher deductible insurance plan, Hill said.
The firm employs approximately 1,800 workers across the U.S., including about 650 in Northeast Ohio.
Starcovic said she had talked with a few fellow retirees of the well-known faucet manufacturer, which had an Elyria facility on Foster Avenue until it closed in 2008. The company has been headquartered in North Olmsted since 1994.
?Everybody is mad and upset,? Starcovic said.
Starcovic, who retired in 2006, worked in a variety of jobs during her 35 years with the company. Those jobs ranged from making faucets and packing them for shipment, to working as a janitor and in shipping.
Moen is not the first company to drop health insurance coverage for Medicare-eligible retirees.
In 1993, 40 percent of employers with 500 or more workers offered coverage, but that number had fallen to 16 percent by 2011, according to a website operated by Kaiser Health News.
Moen retirees had been covered by a number of different insurers in the past several years, but those changes did not hurt benefits, according to Starcovic.
?It?s always been pretty good coverage, with very good prescription benefits, too,? she said.
Starcovic has been paying $29 a month for her insurance through deductions from her pension checks, but now she?s worried about how much new insurance from a carrier not affiliated with the company is going to cost her.
She and other retirees received with the letter booklets detailing Extend Health, a nationwide company offering some 4,000 different plans from about 80 insurance carriers to about 500,000 retirees, according to www.kaiserhealthnews.org.
Starcovic has diabetes, which means she takes prescription medication, some of which currently cost her only $4 or $7 for a 90-day supply.
?The older you get, the more medication you need,? Starcovic said.
Hill declined to provide figures on what retirees might expect to pay for insurance obtained through Extend Health.
?There are so many variables such as a person?s health, medications they take, what doctors they see and how often, and income,? Hill said.
Moen hopes retirees will be ready to choose and enroll in a supplemental health care insurance plan by October during an open enrollment period.
?We don?t want people to buy insurance they might not need, nor do we want them to short-change themselves and not get enough coverage,? Hill said.
Moen will not offer money to help retirees pay for health care insurance, as some companies do.
?That is why we wanted to give people as much notice as we could,? Hill said.
Contact Steve Fogarty at 329-7146 or sfogarty@chroniclet.com.
Source: http://chronicle.northcoastnow.com/2013/03/26/moen-retirees-to-lose-health-care-insurance/
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