The Regents have to decide soon about the future of the UC retirement system. A bad decision could turn UC INSIDE OUT. A scary prospect for Halloween:
Although CalPERS doesn’t run the UC retirement plan, at one point CalPERS offered long-term care insurance to UC employees. It seemed to some folks to be a good idea at the time and they took out policies. Long-term care policies can be bought from commercial carriers. The problem is that you have to trust that these carriers will do right by you many years in the future when you may not be in the best condition to assert your rights. It appeared, however, that having CalPERS – a public entity – providing the policies might be a solution. Sadly, there…
Readers of this blog will know that an initiative has been filed – which appears to have some serious money behind it for a campaign – that would cover UC’s pension and retiree health care programs. In principle, it would be up to the Regents to make any plan revisions the initiative would allow. However, they would be compelled to produce an analysis of what such revisions would be and it might be politically difficult to resist implementing such plans, particularly if other state and local entities are doing it. The Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) has now prepared its analysis…
There has always been a question about exactly what is the legal obligation of UC to pay for retiree health care. The position of the university has been that unlike the pension, there is no obligation. Nothing was really promised for sure. It’s just a nice thing UC does. Employees of one of the former nuclear labs, once operated exclusively by UC but now administered under a consortium including UC, have been litigating over being cut off from UC retiree health as a result of the administrative transition. See below: T Two years ago… the California Supreme Court confirmed that…
If he’s worried now, wait ’til he gets his open enrollment package. Chronicle of Higher Ed takes note of UC employee concerns about changes in the UC health plans: The University of California is overhauling its systemwide health-insurance plans to save on costs and better align with the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act, but some employees are angry over indications that they’ll be paying more just to keep their existing level of service. System officials say that the changes are needed to avoid looming cost increases and that, in most cases, employees who pick the plan that is right for…
Jim Chalfant pointed me to the item below about retirees at one of the labs (Livermore) suing UC for not providing what they view as promised retiree health care benefits. They were given a right to sue – which is not the same thing as obtaining a final favorable decision – on appeal. UC has generally taken the position that while earned pension benefits are a vested right, retiree health care is essentially something nice UC does but doesn’t have to do. There may be special circumstances in terms of what was said specifically to this group of employees. …
For those making retirement contributions to their 403b and 457b plans – and almost every faculty member at UC should be in that category – below is a chart, courtesy of Wells Fargo, to contemplate: [click on the chart to enlarge] You can interpret it on your own. The source is: https://www.wellsfargo.com/downloads/pdf/jump/2012_Elections_Report.pdf
