TRS Board Approves Health Plan Changes to Benefit Retirees

The TRS board — during its July 18-19 meeting — approved agenda items that will likely benefit many of the system’s retirees.

New Vision and Dental Plans
The board approved the final details of a new vision plan and a new dental plan to be offered to retirees under the management of MetLife.

TRS retirees don’t have to have TRS-Care medical coverage to sign up, and they can enroll in either the vision or dental plan (or both). Coverage, following an Oct. 1 to Dec. 7 enrollment period, starts Jan. 1, 2025. There is no obligation for a retiree to sign up for either plan. (More details, including premium rates, here.)

Click image to enlarge.

Medicare Advantage
The board also acted on recommendations by legislative leaders to lower TRS-Care Medicare Advantage (MA) premium rates (see graphic) as of the new plan year that starts Jan. 1, 2025 — and to establish a one-time open enrollment period (details here) allowing retirees who skipped their previous one-time opportunity to join the MA plan under the lower premium rate structure.

TRS staff told the board that a healthy TRS-Care fund balance (estimated to reach a record $7 billion in 2029) — plus various federal changes to Medicare benefits and funding — made it financially viable for the retirement system to lower the MA premiums and set a one-time open enrollment period for previously non-participating retirees.

No premium rate changes were authorized for the TRS-Care Standard plan (see slide).

TRS-ActiveCare
In a related healthcare discussion, TRS Executive Director Brian Guthrie noted that TRS expects to ask legislators to appropriate about $450 million in the next biennium’s budget (roughly SY 2025-26 and SY 2026-27) to continue keeping TRS-ActiveCare school employee premiums from increasing more than 10 percent a year.

Guthrie said that legislators were well aware that the upcoming biennium will be the final phase of an agreed-to four-year process — begun during the current biennium (roughly SY 2023-24 and SY 2024-25) in which $588 million was allocated by the state for TRS-ActiveCare.

Other TRS Board Activity
The board also adopted a new pension fund allocation strategy (press release).

And, as we previously reported:

  • This was the first meeting for the TRS board’s newly appointed chair and a new board member (article).

  • Guthrie began the Friday portion of the two-day meeting by reporting the problems that the CrowdStrike global tech outage had inflicted on the retirement system’s technology systems (article).

The board’s next meeting is Sept. 19.