Let's see what else we can do for corporations at the expense of humans
Quote of note:
In the final rules, the administration said it had tried to balance two "potentially competing objectives": maximizing the number of employers who qualify for subsidies and "providing greater protection to beneficiaries."
Employers Can Get Medicare Subsidies for Lower Benefits
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: January 31, 2005
WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 - The Bush administration has touched off a furious debate with new rules allowing employers to collect billions of dollars in federal subsidies for prescription drug benefits less generous than what many retirees were expecting under the new Medicare law.
In theory, those retiree benefits should be at least equal in value to the new Medicare drug benefit. But that will not always be the case, according to Medicare officials, labor unions and specialists in employee benefits.
In comparing retiree benefits with Medicare, the administration said, many employers will be able to ignore Medicare's catastrophic coverage, which helps people with high drug costs and accounts for about one-fourth of the annual value of the standard Medicare drug benefit, $300 out of $1,220.
Final rules for the new program were published Friday in the Federal Register. The new drug benefit becomes available next January.
In issuing the rules, Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the federal subsidies would reverse the erosion of retiree health benefits and enable employers to "offer high-quality retiree coverage at a much lower cost." To qualify, Dr. McClellan said, employers must provide coverage "as good as or better than" the standard Medicare drug benefit.
But JoAnn C. Volk, a health policy analyst at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said, "The rules allow an employer to get the subsidy for a benefit that is less valuable to retirees than what they would receive if they signed up for the Medicare drug benefit and the employer dropped coverage altogether."
