For retirees’ sake, state needs to finalize plans for shift to Medicare Part D coverage

A Publix Super Markets pharmacy manager retrieves a medication in Miami. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

Bryan Sears did his usual outstanding job covering two important items on this week’s Board of Public Works meeting agenda ( “New prescription benefits contract to yield ‘modest’ initial savings to state” , 8/7/24). But 60,000 state retirees wish he had also reported on the Medicare Prescription Drug Exchange and Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA) services contract on the agenda, intended to assist Maryland’s oldest retired state employees in transitioning from their promised retiree prescription drug plan to Medicare Part D.

Retired state employees 65 and older can only pray the five-year, $8.4 million contract (“plus the start-up period, final transition, and run-out period”) with Extend Health LLC will be successful. A number of retirees have offered to help the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) make it so.

But serious concerns remain.

The DBM website still states retirees would receive more information by July: the two-month delay in awarding the contract has precluded this.

There have been distribution issues with DBM’s announcement letters. After alerts from retirees, DBM determined in February that 2,300+ retirees had not been sent its Jan. 15 notification letter intended for all affected retirees and beneficiaries. After reports from retirees that a July 1 letter sent certified mail by DBM had never been received, DBM was able to identify 3,800+ retirees that had been missed in the July mailing.

Release of Medicare’s 2025 Plan details will occur next month.

Medicare’s Open Enrollment period starts in less than 10 weeks.

Retirees are understandably anxious. And skeptical that help promised by the 2019 law will arrive in time, or that the new contractor will be able to provide the promised help to 60,000 eligible state retirees before the Dec. 7 close of Medicare’s Open Enrollment period.

If not enrolled by that date, these retired state employees will be without any prescription coverage.

Many retirees also fear their 2025 prescription drug costs could rise significantly, despite the $2,000 federal cap on “out-of-pocket” expenses. The discrepancy between the state’s pronouncements and retirees’ expectations on this subject has to do with needed medications prescribed and allowed under the state’s prescription plan that will no longer be available to them under Part D plans, and the terminology shell game the state has played with the phrase Medicare-defined “out-of-pocket” costs.

Retirees have been fighting the loss of their earned prescription drug benefit since 2018. Earlier this year their voices were joined by 15 distinguished lawyers and former judges on The Daily Record editorial advisory board in calling out the injustice of the state’s actions. (Feb. 1, 2024, editorial, “Maryland state retirees deserve prescription drug benefit .”)

In 2011, Maryland became the only state to retroactively strip retirees of an earned benefit. It was unjust to subject retirees to a law that did not exist before 2011 when the state and those employees agreed to exchange labor for salary and benefits.

A 2019 law imposed a second injustice on those state retirees hired before 2011 but retiring after Jan. 1, 2020. That law excludes these retirees, regardless of their length of service to the state, simply because they retired after that date. These retirees will not be receiving a “Health Reimbursement Arrangement” (HRA) supplemental payment in January that was part of the 2019 law. These retirees will NOT be getting the $750 (individual) or $2,000 (couple) their fellow-retirees will get to help them absorb the greater “out-of-their-own-pockets” costs of being moved off their current plan by the state.

The state of Maryland has argued that the courts have upheld its actions to strip its oldest retirees of their prescription benefits.

Courts have also upheld unjust voter suppression laws, discriminatory immigration policies, and unprecedented total immunity for unlawful acts by a former president.

These court rulings do not make such actions just or moral.

In this case, 60,000 Maryland state retirees are being left behind.