Wednesday, July 21, 2010

US Medical benefits-United Healthcare plans cancelled

Before Nortel withdrew its motion to terminate benefits they sent out a package regarding an agreement with United Healthcare. There were supposed to be meetings and conference calls to review the plans offered by UHC.

Since Nortel has withdrawn their motion all of those plans have been cancelled. I spoke to UHC this morning and they advised me that the coverage from Nortel will continue as it was for some unknown time.

Nortel indicated that they reserve the right to re submit so there is no doubt that in the near future our US medical benefits will once again be in jeopardy. In the meantime it would be a good idea to continue looking around for alternative coverage.

6 comments:

  1. Tom,

    I called both Nortel HR at RTP and also the United Healthcare conference center and both of their announcements were the same i.e. Nortel will continue with the coverage for now at least and the United Healthcare deal had been put on ice. I wonder if Nortel has been challenged in court with regatrd to retirees with LTD.

    Mike

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  2. Congrats to my American Nortel colleagues. Your protests have had a great result. Here in Canada, our protests continue, but have not yet, yielded any significant results.

    An interesting article of 21 July by Bert Hill of the Ottawa Citizen "Nortel's Canadian, U.S. creditors face different experiences" is too large to append.

    Here is the opening and you can read the entire piece at the link provided.

    Canadian courts have proved to be a friend of Nortel Networks in fending off bids by pensioners for a bigger piece of $7 billion in assets in the collapse of the one-time giant. But the U.S. courts are proving a tougher nut to crack, forcing Nortel to revise its strategy in order to wriggle out of previous obligations.

    The U.S. Court of Appeal has just put a big roadblock in Nortel plans to cut off drug, dental, eyecare and life insurance coverage of 4,000 Nortel pensioners and the income support of 280 long-term disability recipients as soon as the end of August. As a result of a decision July 13 in a related case, Nortel now must negotiate with the vulnerable groups before it modifies their benefit coverage.

    Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Nortel+Canadian+creditors+face+different+experiences/3302565/story.html?cid=megadrop_story#ixzz0uKq6lkub

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  3. There is a comment at the end of this article that states "They will get 80 per cent of their life and medical benefits premiums covered by a U.S. tax credit, a big help in finding affordable coverage." pertaining to U.S. retirees. Does anyone know what this is all about ?

    Mike Zumhagen (Retiree 2002)

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  4. United Healthcare quoted, for me and my wife, healthy aged 58 & 57, $1368.12 w/$1500 deductible. I checked with Blue Cross and could get a plan as good with higher lifetime payout for $832.42. According to the agent, pre-existing is of no matter if you were on a group policy in the last 63 days. I would suggest checking with Blue Cross. It' not a matter of if Nortl will cancel, but when . . . I assume year end will be the new date.

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  5. My son is in the small group of LTD recipients and he would have gladly joined the retirees but did not qualify as he is not retired. In the event that things go in the right direction, is it likely or even possible that the retirees may receive continuation of benefits and the LTD personnel not? As suggested, we are concerned that this small group may be separated out by Nortel or the court and left out. Any opinions on this?

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