TRS approves reduction in monthly medical premiums for retired teachers

TEXAS (KMID/KPEJ)- State Representative Brooks Landgraf announced Friday that the Texas Retirement System of Texas has approved a long-awaited reduction in monthly premiums for TRS-Care Medicare Advantage.

Landgraf, along with other lawmakers and retired teachers across Texas began fighting for this reduction several years ago.

“The hard work has paid off,” Landgraf said. “The TRS health insurance system that provides health benefits for hundreds of thousands of retired teachers across Texas has been plagued with financial problems really for decades and in recent years we’ve been working to shore up that fund…make sure that TRS is making good investments and a lot of that work is has paid off and that’s one reason why the cuts to the premiums were announced today and that’s gonna save money by putting it back in the pockets of these retired teachers across the state. For so long the cost was being shifted on to the retired teachers because the fund just wasn’t reliable enough to cover those costs.”

TRS retirees can expect to save between $720 and $4,884 each year on premiums.

For Landgraf, the announcement by TRS will not only impact retired teachers, but will help current and future teachers as well.

“As a as a product of public schools and somebody who’s so grateful for the teachers that I had in my life growing up here in Odessa and knowing the impact that they had on me and hundreds of thousands of other millions of other Texas schoolchildren, you know, they’ve worked hard…not for a big paycheck and…it’s the least that we can do and to be very candid the state of Texas starting decades ago made promises to its teachers that look, we might not be able to pay you the highest salary in the country but we are gonna make that up to you by providing you with a good pension and good health insurance when you retire and so even though that was a promise that was made decades ago I think that it’s absolutely important that the state of Texas keep the promise that was made to those teachers when they were deciding what career path they wanted to take and I think it’s also Important today because if we don’t keep our promises, it’s gonna make it more difficult to recruit and retain teachers into the classroom today. So, we can send a strong message to the teachers that we need in the classroom today that we’re also going to take care of you,” he said.

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