NRLN President’s Forum

Medicare Coverage Outside U.S.

Summer officially begins this Thursday, June 21, and many Americans will be traveling across the nation and to foreign countries. If you will be traveling outside the U.S and have traditional Medicare Part A and B, you need to be aware that in general, health care you receive isn’t covered. The exceptions are Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa are considered part of the U.S.

Medicare may pay for inpatient hospital, doctor and or ambulance services in a foreign country in these cases:

• You're in the U.S. when a medical emergency occurs, and the foreign hospital is closer than the nearest U.S. hospital that can treat your medical condition.
• You're traveling through Canada without unreasonable delay by the most direct route between Alaska and another state when a medical emergency occurs, and the Canadian hospital is closer than the nearest U.S. hospital that can treat the emergency.
• You live in the U.S. and the foreign hospital is closer to your home than the nearest U.S. hospital that can treat your medical condition, regardless of whether an emergency exists.

In some cases, Medicare may cover medically necessary health care services you get on board a ship within the territorial waters adjoining the land areas of the U.S. Medicare won't pay for health care services you get when a ship is more than 6 hours away from a U.S. port.

Medicare drug plans don't cover prescription drugs you buy outside the U.S.

Medigap Supplement to Traditional Medicare

If you have a Medigap policy supplementing your traditional Medicare it may offer additional coverage for health care services or supplies that you get outside the U.S. Standard Medigap Plans C, D, F, G, M, and N provide foreign travel emergency health care coverage when you travel outside the U.S. Plans E, H, I, and J are no longer for sale, but if you bought one before June 1, 2010 you may keep it. All of these plans also provide foreign travel emergency health care coverage when you travel outside the U.S.

If you have Medigap Plan C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, M or N, your plan:

• Covers foreign travel emergency care if it begins during the first 60 days of your trip, and if Medicare doesn't otherwise cover the care.
• Pays 80% of the billed charges for certain medically necessary emergency care outside the U.S. after you meet a $250 deductible for the year.

Foreign travel emergency coverage with Medigap policies has a lifetime limit of $50,000.

Before you travel outside the U.S., talk with your Medigap plan’s insurance agent to get more information about your Medigap coverage while traveling.

Medicare Advantage or Travel Health Insurance

If you have a Medicare Advantage health plan (instead of Original Medicare), check with your plan’s insurance agent to see if the plan provides coverage outside the U.S.

While we believe the above information is current you should always verify your Medicare A and B coverage by checking with Medicare.gov or your insurance agent who may have sold you a Medicare Advantage (MA) plan. Some HMO type MA plans restrict your use of both physician and or health care facilities networks in the U.S. and abroad. Likewise, make sure you review your Medigap policies to verify that you are covered.

Also, there is always the option, if necessary, to purchase a travel insurance policy that includes health coverage outside the U.S.

Bill Kadereit, President
National Retiree Legislative Network

reprinted from www.nrln.org

LRO LETTER TO NOKIA

June 1, 2018

Mr. Rajeev Suri
President and Chief Executive Officer, Nokia
Karaporti 3
ESPOO, Finland 02610

Dear Sir:

You may recall that I wrote to you shortly after the merger of Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent to introduce you to our organization, the Lucent Retiree Organization, a wholly volunteer group of former employees. It has been our privilege to assist the some 104,000 Lucent retirees now receiving or entitled to receive pensions and other benefits from Nokia.

In my earlier letter, we specifically expressed our continued interest in the protection of the Group Life Insurance (GLI) benefit for our retirees, a fund which currently does not have sufficient assets to cover all eligible retirees. Mr. Hickey responded on your behalf with no commitment to fully fund the GLI, but did indicate that the funding matter would be reviewed as the time of depletion of fund assets.

Unfortunately, that response continues to leave our retirees in a very uncomfortable position not knowing whether the GLI will be available for their spouse at the time of their passing. We think it important to point out that at the time A.T.&T. split off Lucent in 1996 Lucent received substantially more in assets than liabilities, and the current underfunded state is the result of direct actions taken by Lucent. We ask you once again to make a commitment that all currently eligible retirees will indeed receive their earned Group Life Insurance benefit at their passing.

On a second issue for our retirees, we point out that a pension cost of living increase has not taken place in almost 20 years. Again, when Lucent was spun off from A.T.&T. in 1996 the pension plan was well funded; however, Lucent decreased the pension funding level in the early 2,000 period, much of which was used to pay substantial early retirement incentives. They also cancelled the A.T.&T promised and fully funded Death Benefit that would have paid a surviving spouse one year’s salary directly from the pension fund. The loss of that benefit makes retaining the GLI benefit critical as in many cases it is the only remaining insurance for a retiree.

In reviewing your recent 20F for the year 2017, it appears that our management pension plan is well funded at about 111%. Since Nokia has already adopted the new actuarial tables for accounting purposes, we believe the reported funding level to be accurate. In our review of your pension footnote, we also observe that your total pension and post retirement assets are some 400 million euros greater than their associated obligations for all plans.

We understand that a recurring increase in pensions would have a significant impact on funding, so we are asking specifically that you consider and grant a one-time 10% pension cost of living payment to all of our retirees. Such a payment would only reduce pension assets by about $150 million, resulting in about a 1% reduction in the reported 111% funding level.

Also on the 20F, we observe a 63 million euro pension expense in 2016 and a 75 million euro pension expense in 2017 resulting from the Cash Balance Plan put into effect in recent years for active employees. We are not actuaries, but an annual pension expense of those amounts could be viewed as the present value of almost a billion euros in pension liabilities. We are also aware that there have been no contributions to the assets in the plan for this large increase in obligations nor for the 2,000 additional employees added in 2016. We are not objecting to the provision of pension benefits to active employees, only that retirees should receive some modest increase after waiting almost 20 years.

We respectfully urge you to carefully consider these two requests that would be of significant benefit to your 104,000 Lucent retirees. We wish Nokia much success in the world market place.

Yours truly,

Joe Dombrowski, President, Lucent Retiree Organization

PENSION STATUS REPORT

Recently you should have received from Nokia the Annual Funding Notice (AFN) reporting the status of your pension that they are required to send you each year on April 30. In this status report we will provide some comments on the data in the AFN and also on the information Nokia reported to the SEC earlier this year. The current data in the two documents will probably be the last new current pension status data for this year.

The AFN data provides data at both the beginning of the year (2017) and the end of that year. The beginning of year data covers a three- year period and the following is for the year 2017:

Funding Target Attainment Percentage

Assets $17.628 billion     Liabilities $12.863 billion     Funding Level 137%

Two significant causes are described for the reported funding level. (Also covered in the second paragraph under plan liabilities on page 2 of the AFN). Under Federal Law which was effective in 2011, companies with defined benefit pension plans were allowed to calculate pension liabilities using a 25 year average of interest rates rather than a 2 year average. Currently the 25 year average is greater than the 2 year average, therefore the higher rate reduces the pension liabilities and increases the funding level. Nokia reports that using this average rate adds about 20.5 percentage points to the funding level. The second item is that Nokia has not yet adopted the new actuarial tables for this calculation which also overstates the funding level by about 10%.

The second funding status shown in the AFN is at 12/31/17 as follows:

Assets $18.422 billion     Liabilities $15.636 billion   Funding Level 117.8%

This calculation does not use the 25 year interest rate average but uses the PBGC interest rates. It also does not reflect the use of new actuarial tables which have about a 10% effect on funding level. This funding level is about two percentage points lower than 2016.

Earlier this year, Nokia also filed a Form 20F with the SEC that reported the funding level of our pension plans (in euros) for year end 2016 and 2017.

Please note the reduction in both assets and liabilities for 2017. Since pension recording for our pension plans is done in dollars, it must be converted into euros for financial reporting by Nokia. The exchange rate from dollars to euros increased from about 1.05 to about 1.20 during this period thereby significantly reducing both reported assets and liabilities. You should also note that Nokia has adopted the new actuarial tables for financial reporting.

When Nokia reports total assets and liabilities for all US pension plans and all US post retirement benefits total pension assets (management and represented plans) exceed total liabilities by 2.4 billion euros. Post retirement benefit plans covering both healthcare and group life insurance benefits liabilities exceed assets by 2.0 billion euros. As reported on the 20F (when all plans are added together) some of the positive increase resulted from the improvement in the euro/dollar exchange rate.

The AFN also reports total participants in the pension plan, both active, retired, and entitled to future benefits. Total participants declined from 117,260 on 1/1/16 to 115,150 on 1/1/17 although active employees increased by 2006 during the year 2016. That is of interest to retirees as Nokia increased pension expense by 63 million euros in 2016 and 75 million euros in 2017 in connection with reinstatement of a cash balance pension plan for active employees. Up to now no assets have been contributed to the plan for this expense.

A message from MEDICARE.GOV

Tips from Medicare: Stroke warning signs

Do you know the warning signs of a stroke? May is Stroke Awareness Month, a perfect time to arm yourself with information to help prevent and detect a stroke—for both you and your loved ones. Warning signs of a stroke include:

Weakness in the face, arm, or leg
Speech difficulty
Vision loss
Dizziness
Brief loss of consciousness

Are you or a loved one at risk for a stroke? Watch our short video to learn the risk factors for stroke and see how Medicare can help.

Sincerely,
The Medicare Team

Find out the status of your new Medicare card

You may have heard that we started mailing new Medicare cards to everyone with Medicare. Hang tight — mailing takes some time across the country, and you might get your card at a different time than friends or neighbors in your state.

We’ve got 3 ways for you to find out when you should expect your new Medicare card in the mail:

Check out the map on Medicare.gov/NewCard. Keep coming back to check the status of card mailings in your state. Remember, once card mailings begin in your state, it’ll take about a month to finish.

Keep an eye on your email. We’ll send you an email update when new Medicare cards start mailing in your state.

Log in to your MyMedicare.gov account to see if your new card has mailed. Don’t have an account yet? Sign up now at MyMedicare.gov — it’s a free, secure, and easy way to access all your Medicare information in one place.

Want to learn more about your new Medicare card? Here are 10 things you should know. Read up so you’re ready before your new card arrives!

Sincerely,
The Medicare Team

BEWARE-- MEDICARE SCAM

THE FACTS

Starting 4/1/18 Medicare will start a year-long project to replace all current Medicare cards for beneficiaries to convert to alphanumeric ID numbers. Currently, the ID number is your social security number. New Medicare cards without Social Security numbers are being distributed from April 2018 to April 2019. The new Medicare card will come to you in the mail. You don't need to request it or do anything. It will just show up.Your existing card is good until the new one shows up.

THE SCAM

Somebody from "MEDICARE " will call to tell you-you are getting a new Medicare card. But until it comes you will need a temporary card. Fee for the card is between $5-50 dollars. They want personal information, bank account or credit card so they can process your temporary card.

THINGS TO REMEMBER

• Medicare will never call you unless you ask them to. Medicare does all communications by mail unless you ask them to call.
• Ditto for anybody saying they "work with Medicare to make sure you get everything you are entitled to".
• DO NOT give out information over the phone.
• Spread the word. Feel free to share these notes.
• Use your answering machine to screen calls or just don't even answer a number you don't recognize.
• If it has happened to you or your friends or loved ones and personal info had been given out (happens considerably more often than you think so don't feel bad or stupid) immediately take action to protect yourself against identity theft.

HELP FOR SURVIVORS

The LRO receives frequent requests for dealing with the passing of a retiree or surviving spouse. Consequently, we have created a document that focuses on communicating with Nokia benefits and pensions, along with links to websites with checklists for other family issues. The document is available here.

The document is printable so that you can keep it in your files for future reference.

You should have received an email on 2/8 containing the above information. If you did not receive it, we do not have your current email address. Check the bottom of this column.