The view from the Idea Center

The Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) Board of Trustees dropped the hammer on proposed changes to shore up the solvency of its health care trust fund.

In a 9-2 vote yesterday, the board approved health care cuts that will impact both current and future OPERS retirees.

Starting in 2022, OPERS will reduce the reimbursement allowance on medical expenses for current Medicare-eligible retirees. They’ll drop from their current range of $225 to $405 per month (how much a retiree gets is based on a range of factors) to a range of $178 to $315 per month , according to the Akron Beacon Journal.

For retirees who aren’t yet eligible for Medicare, OPERS is dropping its health care plan all together. Instead, it will give those retirees money to help them buy a plan on the open market.

One of the dissenting board members, Tim Steitz, who represents retirees, said he couldn’t support the reductions when the board is also seeking a cost-of-living adjustment freeze for pension recipients in 2022 and 2023. The board approved the freeze but state lawmakers must agree to it.

OPERS is struggling to keep up with demographic trends. More people are retiring. Those folks have longer life expectancies, and the medical costs required to keep them healthy continues to rise.

OPERS’s executive director told the board the health care fund would run out of money in 11 years if the reductions weren’t approved. The changes are expected to add four to seven years to the fund’s life span. By that time, the pension fund is supposed to resume setting aside money for health care.

Worried OPERS members – both already retired and not – must be crossing their fingers.

See you bright and early tomorrow morning on the radio,
Amy Eddings

Need to KnOH

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Your ideas

Yesterday, we shared a story about a new, culturally targeted kind of help for those trying to quit smoking and asked what helped when you were trying to quit. Pat Brenner shared a story of quitting in 1994, which included going to a stop-smoking clinic. “I knew something about this from a friend but did not expect it to have such a profound effect (sic). After that I started reading about what smoking does to you and how it keeps you hooked,” Pat wrote on our Facebook page. “With all this information I was able to manage my smoking to certain areas and monitoring how I felt when I smoked. When I realized I was getting sick when I smoked I was able to quit.”

This morning, we were intrigued by a conversation with Dr. Mark McConville, author of “Failure To Launch,” on The Sound of Ideas. “What we sometimes inadvertently do is, we raise kids that don’t have a sense of their own resourcefulness,” McConville told host Mike McIntyre. Do you have a live-in adult child? Are they ready to strike out on their own and what have you done to try to encourage and equip them for life outside the nest? Call us at  (216) 916-6476, comment on our Facebook page or join the conversation in Public Square. We'll feature some of your thoughts and comments here in Noon(ish) and on Morning Edition.