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Future Retirees To Lose Health Coverage

Excerpt: Despite absorbing three straight years of double-digit increases in retiree health-care costs, more than half of employers that offer retiree health and drug coverage plan to keep it when the Medicare prescription drug benefit begins in 2006, according to a survey released Tuesday.

Despite absorbing three straight years of double-digit increases in retiree health-care costs, more than half of employers that offer retiree health and drug coverage plan to keep it when the Medicare prescription drug benefit begins in 2006, according to a survey released Tuesday.

This year's Medicare Modernization Act included a financial incentive for employers who offer retiree coverage to keep doing so once Medicare adds a drug benefit in 2006. Companies that keep their drug plans will receive a 28 percent federal subsidy for each retiree.

Some health-care analysts are watching to see whether employers, after weighing their options, drop or scale back their retiree drug plans despite the incentives.

But 58 percent of 333 large employers surveyed said they're likely to continue drug coverage in exchange for the subsidy, according to a study from the Kaiser Family Foundation and Hewitt Associates. Of that group, 85 percent said they plan to retain current benefit levels.

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