Early Retiree Health Insurance
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While I realize the national trend is for employers to shy away from offering older workers early retirement health insurance, we are a City government in Tennessee, and we currently do not offer such a benefit (besides their legal rights to COBRA which is too expensive for most of them, so they keep working). We have a number of employees between 60-65 that would love to retire, if they could only have some help with health insurance until Medicare kicks in. Most of them understand to have a lifetime plan would be impractical in today's health world. I already can think of numerous pros and cons to such a plan, but my question is if there are any sources out there, besides the $20K consultants, that are available to guide me through the decision making process. If I overlook even one or two subtle issues, it could all blow up. I'm partly joking about the consultants, but truth is I would have a hard time going to my City Council asking for $20K for such a project when budgets are tight. But I would like to at least do the research for our employees. Any ideas?
Comments
To research this, I'd call your insurance carrier and ask what it will do to your rates. Second, I'd go talk to your CFO and ask about what would happen to the balance sheet if you did this. I think you'll find you won't want to do this. Many of the large employers that have offered this in the past are still trying to get out from under it. (The big car makers have continually tried to get the federal government to step in and accept this responsibility from them to stay in business).
Hope that helps.
Margaret Morford
theHRedge
615-371-8200
[email]mmorford@mleesmith.com[/email]
[url]http://www.thehredge.net[/url]