Medicare question

[Happy prose]

my brother is 65, in NJ. He has health insurance provided by his employer, and of course he contributes. It is a small company with 17 employees. The owners just told them (there are three people 65+) that they are going to take away their insurance, and they should get medicare. Is this legal? It sounds like age discrimination! 

[Tennesseer]

Nov 30, 2017 18:24:17 GMT -5 Happy prose said:

my brother is 65, in NJ. He has health insurance provided by his employer, and of course he contributes. It is a small company with 17 employees. The owners just told them (there are three people 65+) that they are going to take away their insurance, and they should get medicare. Is this legal? It sounds like age discrimination! 

Is the employer going to compensate those turning 65 by making a contribution to health reimbursement account in the employee"s name to help the employee pay for Medical Part B and supplemental plans?

[Happy prose]

No.

[Tennesseer]

Nov 30, 2017 18:32:33 GMT -5 Happy prose said:

No.

If the under 65 years of age employees continue receiving company provided medical insurance while those over 65 do not, then it is wage and benefits discrimination.

I would tell your brother to contact his state EEOC office and run it by them.

[alabamagal]

It doesn't sound correct, but here is what I found on the internet (and so it must be true!) about signing up for Medicare

Small business workers may need to sign up. If you’re about to turn 65, and you work for an employer with fewer than 20 workers, yes, you probably need to sign up. In these small-employer plans, Medicare becomes what’s called the primary payer of covered insurance claims for employees 65 and older. Your employer plan is the secondary payer.

I'm not sure your employer can drop you, but your employer becomes secondary, and will then have lower payouts for claims.

[Happy prose]

I think if the company agreed to be the secondary, they wouldn't complain. As of today, that was not offered to them.

[Happy prose]

alabamagal That paragraph doesn't sound like the company can kick you off their health plan.

[Tennesseer]

Not the same situation as your brother, but when I retired from my employer, I was on their retiree health care insurance until the month I turned 65 and went on Medicare.  After that, I receive a certain amount of money each month from my employer to help pay for medical health care visits, pay for medicare Part B or D, or any other supplemental insurance connected to Medicare I carry like Part F.  

[Happy prose]

Tennesseer I think his company should offer something similar. It's rather unfair to do to your 3 oldest employees. 

[Tennesseer]

Nov 30, 2017 18:59:50 GMT -5 Happy prose said:

Tennesseer I think his company should offer something similar. It's rather unfair to do to your 3 oldest employees. 

If the younger employees are still going to be covered, and the older not, I say your brother should contact his state's EEOC or Department of Labor office and run it by them. Medical benefits are part of their and everyone else's compensation package. Your brother iscbeing short changed..

[hoops902]

Nov 30, 2017 19:04:46 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Nov 30, 2017 18:59:50 GMT -5 Happy prose said:

Tennesseer I think his company should offer something similar. It's rather unfair to do to your 3 oldest employees. 

If the younger employees are still going to be covered, and the older not, I say your brother should contact his state's EEOC or Department of Labor office and run it by them. Medical benefits are part of their and everyone else's compensation package. Your brother iscbeing short changed..

They're being shortchanged from the sounds of it...the question is whether it's illegal though ultimately (I assume that's the real question). I'm not sure if they're immune to that by being so small or not.

[Tennesseer]

Nov 30, 2017 19:19:06 GMT -5 hoops902 said:

Nov 30, 2017 19:04:46 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

If the younger employees are still going to be covered, and the older not, I say your brother should contact his state's EEOC or Department of Labor office and run it by them. Medical benefits are part of their and everyone else's compensation package. Your brother iscbeing short changed..

They're being shortchanged from the sounds of it...the question is whether it's illegal though ultimately (I assume that's the real question). I'm not sure if they're immune to that by being so small or not.

The Federal Age Discrimination law covers businesses with 20 or more employees. In this case here, there are 17 employees. While the Equal Pay Act is for employers with 15 or more employees, it is more about equal pay for women. If one of the employees losing their medicsl benefits at the brother's workplace is a woman, it could be argued she and the men are equally being discriminated against because of pay and benefits.

Additionally, depending in what state the brother works, the number of employees in a work place may be less than 20 to have the business follow state age discrimination laws. Some states are more generous protecting their elderly citizens from discrimination in the workplace.

[Sharon]

My Dad is a small business owner, 5 employees counting himself.  When they went to renew their insurance at the end of 2016 for this year the insurance company wouldn't cover my Mom and Dad because they should be on Medicare.  I don't know all of the details other than my Dad went into a rant for 3 weeks until they got it settled. Every time I saw him he was ranting about the insurance companies and the government and why couldn't we buy the insurance he wanted if he was willing to pay for it.

Moral of the story it the insurance company dictating the coverage for seniors vs the employer.

[nittanycheme]

From my understanding, most small employers need to have their over 65 employees sign up for medicare and then the employer can let their insurance be secondary (essentially is now their Medigap plan).  Based upon my understanding, a lot of insurance companies really upcharge if they keep the older folks that are medicare-eligible on their policy.  Larger employers usually don't require that, but a lot of them really self-insurance, and just have insurance companies that just administer their plans, so its not necessarily forced on them.   There's a show on SiriusXM doctor radio by a guy named Andrew Rubin that is a call-in show about health insurance questions (he and two others in the NYU Langone business group host it) and they answer this type of question fairly regularly.   There may be something about it on his website, although I've never checked out his website.  I usually just listen to the show either live or on demand.  Its really interesting, and I learn quite a bit.

[countrygirl2]

My husband was able to stay on medicare and me too till he retired at 69. But man
it was a big hassle for months with medicare before we got it all straightened out.

They advise everyone to take medicare part A at 65, there is not charge for it, I
did, hubs did not.

But the supplement and drug coverage is what they will also need to get. Honestly
I think what they are doing is perfectly legal being a small employer, doubt they
have much recourse.

[Deleted]

Nov 30, 2017 21:05:52 GMT -5 Sharon said:

My Dad is a small business owner, 5 employees counting himself.  When they went to renew their insurance at the end of 2016 for this year the insurance company wouldn't cover my Mom and Dad because they should be on Medicare.  I don't know all of the details other than my Dad went into a rant for 3 weeks until they got it settled. Every time I saw him he was ranting about the insurance companies and the government and why couldn't we buy the insurance he wanted if he was willing to pay for it.

Moral of the story it the insurance company dictating the coverage for seniors vs the employer.

The potential savings is huge if you look at it from the employer's point of view. I'm 64 and paying for my own health insurance (retired 3 years ago). It's up to $776/month for a $6,000 deductible and a crappy network. Every year at renewal my current plan wouldn't be available and I'd really have to scour the market for something that provided even scant out-of-network coverage. Since a typical employer plan is more generous, I can see why it makes sense for a small employer to want Medicare to be primary. Put another way, it makes it more feasible for them to offer health insurance to the others.

[Tennesseer]

Dec 1, 2017 9:24:13 GMT -5 @athena53 said:

Nov 30, 2017 21:05:52 GMT -5 Sharon said:

My Dad is a small business owner, 5 employees counting himself.  When they went to renew their insurance at the end of 2016 for this year the insurance company wouldn't cover my Mom and Dad because they should be on Medicare.  I don't know all of the details other than my Dad went into a rant for 3 weeks until they got it settled. Every time I saw him he was ranting about the insurance companies and the government and why couldn't we buy the insurance he wanted if he was willing to pay for it.

Moral of the story it the insurance company dictating the coverage for seniors vs the employer.

The potential savings is huge if you look at it from the employer's point of view. I'm 64 and paying for my own health insurance (retired 3 years ago). It's up to $776/month for a $6,000 deductible and a crappy network. Every year at renewal my current plan wouldn't be available and I'd really have to scour the market for something that provided even scant out-of-network coverage. Since a typical employer plan is more generous, I can see why it makes sense for a small employer to want Medicare to be primary. Put another way, it makes it more feasible for them to offer health insurance to the others.

It was monthly premiums like yours which made me glad to turn 65.

[movingforward]

If they have under 20 employees then essentially, yes, they can tell them they will not be covered. If they wanted to be nice they would allow their insurance to be secondary but they don't HAVE to do that.

I work in an office of 10 people and my boss just turned 65. What we did was get the new premium amount without her included. She went on medicare and now we are simply giving her around $500 a month (what it cost us per employee) to help cover the cost of her medicare and secondary insurance.

[Deleted]

Dec 1, 2017 10:03:42 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

It was monthly premiums like yours which made me glad to turn 65.

Yep- Medicare starts 1/1 for me, thank God. It will free up $$ to fund the granddaughters' 529 accounts.

[bean29]

Nov 30, 2017 18:24:17 GMT -5 Happy prose said:

my brother is 65, in NJ. He has health insurance provided by his employer, and of course he contributes. It is a small company with 17 employees. The owners just told them (there are three people 65+) that they are going to take away their insurance, and they should get medicare. Is this legal? It sounds like age discrimination! 

That is illegal. We are in a similar situation. If your group is below a certain size (20/21?), when your employees enroll in Medicare at 65, the Medicare becomes primary and the group ins secondary. It causes a very significant drop in the insurance cost to the company ( I want to say from maybe $2,000/month to something like $500-700/month). We initially re-imbursed the cost of the part B premium - but when ACA was implemented it was clear that this was illegal. What we did was adjust the salary of the employee up to compensate for the extra OOP cost.