DOE is withholding Part D funds
There is evidence that DOE is circumventing the intent of Congress by withholding Part D Medicare funds from contractors for partial payments of their costs of maintaining drug benefits for retirees.
Our understanding is that the 2003 Congress passed the Medicare Improvement Act to benefit older citizens. This Act established a The DOE contractors were apparently discouraged by DOE from applying for the subsidy. In the case of the Oak Ridge, Tennessee facilities, UT-Battelle LLC, operator of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, applied for the subsidy, but that request was rejected by DOE. BWXT LLC (operator of the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant) did not apply for the subsidy after it heard about the rebuff of UT-Battelle’s application. We do not know whether other DOE contractors in Oak Ridge applied. Since the contractors split the cost of their drug benefit with retirees on a 50-50 basis, the easiest way for them to apply the subsidy would have been to apply it to the total insurance cost (and thus reduce the cost) and then split the remaining cost on a 50-50 basis. However, the contractors have not received this subsidy from the DOE.
In other words, the Part D supplement could have been used to reduce your insurance premiums. It has not been. Retirees might want to ask their congressmen–"Why not?".