5/30/2011: If you are nearing retirement you should be reading Dennis Thompson in the Statesman Journal and also the very well informed persinfo blog:
… Finally, there must be a special hell reserved for my colleagues in the Oregon University System who decided way back in 1996 to accept the OUS’ one-time offer to withdraw from PERS and join the OUS’ “Optional Retirement System”. Money deposited into PERS remained in PERS but future money went into a variety of accounts managed by the system. The system has always been part of the Oregon State Government and paychecks have always come from the State of Oregon. But this doesn’t seem to matter at retirement, as some at PERS have decided that the period between 1996 and retirement, IF YOU ARE IN THE ORP, do not count as state service for the purpose of eligibility for the RHIPA pre-retirement health care subsidy, which is only available to “state” employees based on years of service. For reasons totally opaque to anyone, they are fighting counting the period post-1996 as service to the state. All I can say is that for those of you in that system, watch out for this diamond back. It will hit you at the worst possible time, and it seems to be the result of an bureaucratic and arbitrary decision by someone in that Department at PERS. Hopefully, as I write, this will be straightened out. Retired people shouldn’t have to fight these kinds of battles over healthcare.
As he says, “hopefully this will be resolved”, because it is a huge problem for those affected.
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