|
Senator
Brown Introduces Bill to Protect Health Benefits for
Retiring Workers
Bill would address workers deciding to retire or forego
health insurance
This week, State Senator Edna Brown (D-Toledo) introduced
Senate Bill 385 to prevent some public employees from losing
their health benefits. SB 385 would require that members of
the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) retiring
on or after January 1, 2015, who have attained age 60 with
15 or more years of service credit on that date, are treated
as retiring on or before December 1, 2014, for purposes of
qualifying for any retiree health care coverage provided by
the Retirement System.
“There are over 22,000 public employees aged 60 years and
older with between ten and twenty years of service who have
been adversely affected by draconian changes to the health
coverage offered by OPERS,” said Senator Brown. “These
workers are facing a choice between unexpected early
retirement and the possibility of losing health coverage
through the OPERS system.”
By statute, the Ohio General Assembly gave OPERS the
authority to make determinations regarding health care rules
for retired Members of the System. At the time of the most
recent OPERS pension reforms in Senate Bill 343, the OPERS
Board of Trustees made changes to the health care rules.
This included requiring retirees to have twenty years of
qualifying service starting in 2015 rather than the present
requirement of ten years for OPERS sponsored health care.
“OPERS has stated that this rule change is a way to save
health care, but I feel older employees are being unfairly
used to ‘fix’ decisions made in the past,” said Brown. “It
is important to protect and transition employees who may not
reach the new 20 year requirement due to their age.”
|
