The newly proposed postal reform bill, known as 'H.R.756 - Postal Service Reform Act of 2017' has many different aims and goals, one of them being the radical change to the healthcare options for postal workers and the apparent removal of a postal workers opportunity to participate in a multitude of plans in the federal healthcare insurance options. It appears the reform bill will force employees into postal employee only plans or plan. Of course, we know very little on this attempt by the Postal Service to develop their own plan and then, upon retirement, place retirees in a medicare plan. What does all of this mean to the postal worker and retiree? Will out-of-pocket expenses for the postal worker/retiree radically rise over time? We know that medicare forces people to pay larger fees in many circumstances. We feel this will drastically reduce competition and increase prices due to fewer healthcare options for postal workers as well as opening the door to future changes to health care plans for for federal workers. The reform plan will force postal workers to enroll in a postal plan. That scares us. Do you think this plan will help postal workers and retirees get better and less expensive care with good coverage or do you think the goal is to place more expense on the worker/retiree in an effort to lower agency costs? You can look at it as similar to the changes that took workers/retirees out of CSRS and then placing them in FERS. If you think that was a good change, you may like it. However, you may see it as a big problem for the working class in the end. Our bet is that the plan helps corporate America more than the worker.
This Article is From: The Postal Newsgroup
