Attendees:

DeGette’s Staff:

Andrea Autobee-Trujillo

Karly Malpiede

RMAC:

Pat Finley

Hazel Floyd

Barbara Wilcox

National

Congressional Actions Affecting Social Security and Medicare after Super Committee Failure. Year end Unfinished Business in Congress: Payroll Tax Cut, Medicare SGR.

Congresswoman DeGette doesn’t want cuts to Social Security or Medicare.
She also supports the payroll tax cut extension. RMAC members expressed concern that the tax cut takes money out of the Social Security Trust Fund. The staffers gave assurance that those paying into Social Security now will still get the full benefits.

The Congresswoman supports a permanent fix to the SGR formula for physician’s pay under Medicare. RMAC also supports a permanent fix.

Fallout from EEOC Retiree Health Care Ruling

RMAC members described the EEOC ruling, made during the Bush administration, and a little of it’s history. RMAC is concerned about the ruling, because it opens the door for employers to
drop retiree health benefits once the retiree becomes eligible for Medicare. Barbara
Wilcox will send documents that explain the ruling and how it came about. Karly
will forward these documents to the staff member who deals with EEOC
issues. RMAC’s request is that EEOC revisit this ruling, now that there has been a change in administration.

Colorado

Discussion of CenturyLink Changes to Retiree Benefits

The RMAC members present, who are all CenturyLink retirees, described the actions taken by CenturyLink after it bought out US West to change retiree benefits. The change with the most
impact was the dropping of Company group coverage for certain management
retirees who are on Medicare. The EEOC ruling on retiree health benefits made this possible. CenturyLink is funding Health Reimbursement Accounts for these retirees with the money that previously was spent on the group coverage, and retirees are having to buy their own Medicare Advantage, Medigap and/or Medicare D Prescription Drug coverage on the open market. This is causing great turmoil for retirees who have never had to think about the complexities of the Medicare-related plans before.

RMAC

Status of 2-Page White Paper “The Need for Medicare Catastrophic Coverage”

This RMAC issue is familiar from previous meetings. Barbara Wilcox
will send the newly abbreviated white paper to Karly and Andrea.

Status of RMAC Website

Pat Finley, RMAC Webmaster, described the website to the staffers and invited them to visit it.

Future of RMAC

John Kotson has had to resign from RMAC and its chairmanship because of increasing back problems. The group has resolved to continue and will discuss its future structure at its next meeting.

Next Meeting

Andrea and Karly were invited to the next RMAC meeting on January 27, 10 AM ‘till noon, at Hazel Floyd’s house, 4660 Newton St., Denver.