Losing your health insurance at 83 - what do you do?

The Ford Motor Company, as part of its "restructuring", has just now quietly essentially terminated its retiree health insurance plan (which includes drug insurance and Medigap coverage) for its salaried retirees.  They can't do this to their hourly worker retirees, who are covered by the collective bargaining agreement with the UAW, but the salaried retirees are not protected by anything - law or unions.  So what does this mean?  Well, I can't speak for all Ford retirees, but I can tell you about one - my mom, who at 83 has just had her world destablized.  Way to go, Ford!  For more, follow me below the fold.

My grandparents and my parents all worked for Ford, in my father's case for about 40 years.  He started as an hourly worker, but was promoted to salary guy in the mid-1950's - this doesn't mean he was highly paid, however.  He was a foreman, and never made more than $12,000 a year while I was still living at home.  He retired in his early 60's, with a pension, and retiree health insurance covering both him and my mother, who now lives on her pension as a widow of a Ford retiree and Social Security, mainly.  She never tires of reminding me that when they first retired, they paid no more than $2 for every prescription.  I in turn never tire of reminding her that that was 25 years ago, and that even the $14 she pays for prescriptions under the current plan is a great deal, and much better than most people get.  But a few days ago, she got a packet in the mail that changes all that.

Now, I'm something of an expert in pension law, and I knew (and have told my mother before) that Ford had the power to terminate its retiree health plan at any time. ERISA, the Federal pension law, governs such plans, but does not require vesting, so employers generally can cancel retiree health plans at will.  I did think, however, that Ford would do for salaried retirees whatever they did for union retirees - in general, they've been in lock step.  But I was wrong - the company decided their stock price was more important than the well-being of thousands of elderly men and women, who now have to figure out what the hell to do.

Now, they're giving her something - and I do mean "something" - less than $2000 a year in a reimbursement plan, that she can use to pay for premiums in another Medigap plan, if we can find one that will cover an elderly woman with tons of chronic health issues, or for drugs or premiums for a drug plan under Medicare (at least I think she can - we'll find out details on all this later this year.)  And I am well aware how lucky we have been that she's had all this coverage for the last 20 years of several operations and lots of prescription drugs and doctor visits.  But my biggest problem is trying to convince her that her world is not coming to an end.

She's very fortunate in that she and my father worked and saved like crazy, during this country's economic boom times.  She has the funds to pay for what Ford will no longer pay for - and she has me to help her figure all this out.  But what about all the elderly widows out there who don't have her kind of savings?  Or a child who knows the law and the programs to help figure out what to do with that princely sum Ford is now giving her?  And, most important, how do I restore her sense of security, which anyone who has cared for an elderly parent can tell you is absolutely essentially to mental well-being, never mind physical health.

It's the last problem I really can't forgive Ford for - the idea that people in their 80's and 90's can just sit down with the snazzy brochure they sent (and a DVD!  I don't know anybody my mother's age who can figure out how to work a DVD player, for God's sake) and calmly act like the good little capitalist consumer of health care goods that all the conservative policy analysts think they should be. What actually happens is that the elderly person is immediately panicked, and sometimes paralyzed by the thought that what they've lived with and counted on is no longer there.

This is one of the big problems with the Medicare drug plan, and the alternate plans for Medicare private coverage - elderly people, even ones who are able to live independently and function well, are thrown for a loop when something as important to their lives as health care is radically changed, requiring them to make choices based on knowledge about their future probable health that they simply don't have.  And if they don't have knowledgable family to help with the choices, what the hell are they supposed to do?

I'm very glad my mom has me and my brothers to help her through this change, and that she and my dad never spent an unnecessary dime in their lives so that now she has the resources to pay for the care she needs.  But I'm sure she's going to start cutting her pills in half or skipping meds, without telling me, because she wants to leave those savings to her children, not spend it on herself.  I'm even more worried, though, about the thousands of her peers who don't have as much as she does, and who don't have me to help them make their choices.  What do they do now?