winter 2006 Special Issue

Message from the Chair

Health benefits are on everyone’s mind these days.

by Tom Pappas, RTC Chapter Leader

Across the country working Americans watch their benefits shrink day by day — or disappear completely — while millions more remain uninsured. Most of us are reaching deeper into our pockets to pay for soaring health costs.

As UFT retirees we are among the very lucky ones with generous pension provisions and extensive health-care protection. But, with ongoing increased costs and changes in health coverage, we know you too are concerned about what’s happening to your health benefits. To bring you up to date, we have put together this special issue of the Retiree.

Read carefully the Welfare Fund article by Arthur Pepper, executive director of the UFT Welfare Fund.

Among many other improvements, you will find Welfare Fund improvements that result from the successful negotiation of a new contract. They include an increase in optional rider reimbursement from $600 to $660, extended health insurance coverage to surviving dependents for up to four months and now the Fund will help our most vulnerable Medicare Part D-eligible retirees by reimbursing their 5 percent drug costs when they reach the catastrophic level. The Part D regulations do not allow the UFT to reimburse retirees for drug costs incurred while in the “donut hole.”

If you are Medicare-eligible, you have been notified by Social Security by now about monthly increases in Medicare Part B that are, for the first time, based on means-testing. Although the city currently refunds retiree Part B costs — a result of UFT lobbying — we will continue to strongly oppose means-testing.