I am retired from AT&T and on medicare now . Why did the company take away the $2,700 a year they were putting into my HRA account .
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@11v I believe off payroll by 12/31/2020 was the date to receive the $2700. I left in 2021 and it was off the table. Off payroll by 12/31/2021 was to receive the pre-medicare group medical sub'y.
Not sure if you're aware, but if you didn't leave ATT by the end of 2021, you would lose that benefit. If you retired after, then you never got it because you were warned. If you retired before the end of 2021 and were receiving it and now no longer getting it, then perhaps AT&T discontinued it. There's no longer any guarantees with this company. Retirement benefits are slowly going by the wayside.
When I retired (management), I went out assuming the $2700 would eventually be reduced or taken away totally, the writing was on the wall. The Advantage Plan, its UHC, not much more to say there! I am confident T will slowly raise deductibles within the plan, or start charging a "small fee" and eventually abandon it all together. I went traditional Medicare and supplemental, it costs me about $350 a month combined, and will go up, but after having surgery, with a doctor I wanted and paying $0.00 out of pocket, enough said!
Not sure what happens when United Healthcare gets done with the government for suspected fraud.
You probably won't have a plan anymore and any new plan you try to join will hit you with pre-existing condition type things and can even refuse you or charge you higher rates than if you joined the plan when you first became eligible.
From all of my analysis it's the best Advantage plan in the market.
An advantage plan is nothing more than the privatization of medicare that many in government wanted for years. Good for you if you think it's good. I know plenty who think it s@cks and the company got what they wanted by them declining to use that alternative. It's essentially the employee select plan. If your doctors are on the limited doctor list, you'll like it, otherwise you'll be forced to agree to the doctors that choose to accept the terms the plan pays and is why the doctor list is so small. Most people regard it as a you get what you paid for option.
Because it's easy to take away benefits after the fact. As for the one who likes the advantage plan, look around, you can get a lot of advantage plans for basically free. So taking away that perk was simply money in their pockets without really giving the retiree anything they couldn't have gotten on their own. And you also must live in a place where there are a lot of options because the people I know who looked into it have said it's the worst hospitals, the worst doctors, the worst dentists. Yes, it covers more things than normal medicare but to pay for those extra things means attracting doctors and dentists who are willing to take less money. So guess who agrees to those terms? Ones that don't have enough patients because they are cr-ppy.
It doesn't suprise me in the least that they took away this benefit perk to retirees after the fact because this is the kind of sh*tty company AT&T is.
In a nutshell, the $2700 was to pay for supplement insurance for Medicare. Now they provide an Medicare Advantage plan at no cost to retiree and spouse. From all of my analysis it's the best Advantage plan in the market. No problems with it so far. Not sure what happens when United Healthcare gets done with the government for suspected fraud.
Wow, how can people not know this stuff. Unreal....la, la la
All the old policies and promises when you were working are gone since they pizzed away so much on bad acquisitions and decisions. Of course the c suite packages have only become enhanced, you are just an expense on a spreadsheet and don’t mean anything to them beyond work.
Not sure this helps, but as a retired employee (Former management), I believe AT&T stops subsidizing Medical benefits once you are Medicare eligible. They tried to get me to buy in to their United Healthcare Medicare Advantage program (I chose to start with Original Medicare instead).
The company sees no point in subsidizing your health care once you are Medicare eligible.
The execs and shareholders are barely making it after the super high inflation from the last president. You are just an expense and they don’t care!
Cost cutting
The shareholders needed that money.
Why would they pay employees a million dollars a month?
Check this Facebook retiree groups. This site is for active T employees.
Because:
They
Don't
Care!