Hey Irv. I just read through the PDFs. My interpretation of the "Survivor Benefits" goes back to when you retired and chose the "leveling option" of taking reduced retirement benefit so the wife could get what percentage (default was 50%) of your retirement if you went before she did. So if you chose that option, which many of us did, per page 8 of the Educational Brochure, you would look at "row 2", "Retiree with Survivor Benefit". So if you took the "Enhance Plan", you would pay $27/mo. premium with no additional reimbursements like with VIA. If you took the Essential, you would have a $0/mo. premium and get an annual $1000 (probably use it or lose it) like VIA and a $25/mo. decrease in what the government takes out of your SS check for medicare. With either plan, your wife would not get anything, she could probably get the same plan, but they don't make that clear - it would not surprise me if she would have to sign up with her own plan either with UHC or some other company.? Per the Brochure "***IBM spouses/dependents are not eligible for funding, unless you are a surviving spouse of an IBM participant who elected survivor benefits.". So if you went before her, she would be eligible to participate if you took the leveling option when you retired.
Basically, IMO, IBM wasn't being up-front in saying this was better than what we had on VIA. On the VIA plan, you could get reimbursement on the monthly medicare deduction for SS for your wife and then file for the SHAP reimbursement for yourself. ? For those of who had the $3000/3500 Use it or lose it", it boils down to they lost most of it and its not clear that you might end up losing the SHAP for yourself if you get the monthly $25 reduction in your medicare deduction. Probably use SHAP for your wife's medicare deduction if you took the Essential plan with the $1000 + $300. The $1000 is probably use it or lose it and the $300 is the $25/mo SS medicare kickback. The links are:? ? , ?? ,??? and? ? .? I should have added these links will download the PDFs into your download folder. So you can read them at your liesure off-line.
