Confusion, Misinformation Could Hinder USPS's Early-Retirement Push

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Confusion reigns among the 115,000 postal workers who received notices in the past few days about a buyout offer. The confusion could limit the number of APWU-represented career employees who accept the U.S. Postal Service’s $15,000 incentive to retire or quit.

”The Postal Service's voluntary early retirement annuity estimates are as bad as before,” says Don Cheney, a long-time critic of the U.S. Postal Service’s communications with its employees regarding retirement benefits.

As usual, the errors tend to understate what employees’ benefits will be upon retirement, says Cheney, an APWU member who for the last nine years has been advising postal workers and writing about errors in retirement estimates the U.S. Postal Service provides its employees.

(See How Does the Postal Service Discourage Early Retirement? Let Me Count the Ways, Why Does USPS Make Retiring Difficult When It Has So Many Excess Employees?, and The Postal Service's Early-Retirement Snafu for more on how the Postal Service’s poor communications have undercut its previous efforts to downsize by offering early-retirement incentives.)

“I am receiving numerous inquiries about the retirement incentive,” former APWU president Bill Burrus wrote a few days ago. He urged the union’s current leadership to designate a knowledgeable officer or staff member to help members who have questions about the early-out incentive.

“This is an important time in their lives and they are in need of timely answers to their questions,” Burrus wrote. And they won’t get those answers from the Postal Service. As Cheney notes, USPS offers no retirement counseling to employees taking early retirement until after the decision to retire is irrevocable, which postal unions claim is contrary to federal regulations (not to mention common sense).

Referring to a recent estimate one employee received, Cheney says, “This 51-year-old individual in the FERS retirement system was not told whether they are eligible for the SS [Social Security] annuity supplement, how much it would be or when it would start.”  He adds, “If VERA [Voluntary Early Retirement] eligibles in FERS knew they would get about $800/month more in their FERS annuities at Minimum Retirement Age (MRA), more would take it,” he adds.

"There is still the misconception among FERS employees of an age penalty in a Voluntary Early Retirement,” Cheney says. “The opposite is true in most cases.”

Also tending to discourage early retirements is the mistaken belief that the IRS charges a 10% early-withdrawal penalty for money taken out of a Thrift Savings Plan by early retirees, he says.

 “Congress made an exception for federal and postal employees that retire or separate at age 55 or later. For them, there is no 10% IRS early withdrawal penalty,” Cheney says. “Younger retirees can avoid the IRS penalty by withdrawing their money as an annuity.”

Slow processing of retirees’ paperwork and payments has also tended to discourage early retirements, but this time around at least some postal workers may benefit from the backlogs at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The 21st Century Postal Worker, a web site serving APWU members, passes along this message:

“For all that put their retirement paperwork in prior to the [incentive] announcement, call OPM ASAP and ask if your paperwork has been processed. If it has not been processed (there is a 6-8 week wait), the effective date of retirement can be changed to reflect the incentive memo. Do NOT DELAY! Do not hang up until you actually reach a representative from OPM. Do NOT leave a call back. Stay on the phone until you make sure the paperwork is reprocessed and you fax in a copy to change the date of retirement.”

8 Questions About Newsweek's Future

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Google News indicates that more than 1,000 articles were published Thursday about Newsweek magazine abandoning print but continuing as the digital Newsweek Global. Still, many questions remain unanswered, including: 

Recent Newsweek cover -- and a parody

1. Will some of the millions of dollars no longer being forked over to the U.S. Postal Service, paper mills, and printers be reinvested in more and better content? 
2. Will Newsweek Global’s covers still inspire hilarious parodies? Or will lack of visibility at airports, grocery stores, and dentists’ offices mean its covers will no longer matter, regardless how hard Tina Brown tries?
3. What will happen to current subscribers who don’t have internet or computer access or just don’t want a digital publication? Will they get their money back? 
4. How will advertisers respond to Newsweek Global and its lack of ratebase (guaranteed minimum circulation)? 
5. What does this mean for TIME magazine? Will it benefit from its archrival’s loss of visibility, or will it get sucked down the same toilet? 
6. Will Newsweek Global be only a digital magazine – for example, with numbered pages and a regular publication schedule? Or will some subscribers view its content on an unpaginated, paywall-protected web site that is continuously updated? 
7. Is Newsweek truly abandoning print, or will it become a zombie on newsstands like Life and U.S. News & World Report, living on in “bookazines” (special issues)? 
8. Will Newsweek Global survive? 

Added thought: It turns out the Mayans weren't quite right: 2012 isn't the end of Time, it's the end of Newsweek.

Related articles:

• Newsweek Takes a Stand: Profits Are for Wimps
• What Exactly Did Barry Diller Say About Newsweek's Future?  
• Tina Brown Follows Husband's Footsteps -- Sort Of

Superstorm Sandy's Seven Lessons About Print Media

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Many readers in the mid-Atlantic region report a new appreciation for print media in the wake of Sandy’s mayhem. Among the observations they passed along are:

1. The best photos are still created for print media. Iwan Baan rented a helicopter to capture the stunning image that graced the cover of New York magazine’s post-storm issue. No one goes to those kinds of lengths, or expense, to produce a photo that will only appear in digital media. 
2. Print works just fine when the power is out. 
3. Print’s battery doesn’t die. 
4. If you own a printed product, you don’t need a wifi connection to access it. 
5. This came from a New York reader: "When I awoke to what looked like a war zone Tuesday [Oct. 30], I thought I was completely cut off from the outside world – no power, no Internet, no phone, no battery-operated or hand-cranked radio (since rectified). But when I ventured outside my apartment building, I spotted a newspaper box with an amazing sight: that day’s edition of the New York Daily News. It had obviously ‘gone to bed’ too early the previous evening to have all the news of the storm, but I eagerly dug in. At that moment print was clearly the superior technology for conveying news."
6. A New Jersey resident wrote: "We didn’t get enough rain Monday night [Oct. 29] to cause any flooding, but by the next morning most major roads were blocked by downed power lines and utility poles and practically the whole town had no electricity. The whole region was such a mess that the local daily newspaper didn’t even try to publish that day. Our street was eerily quiet most of the morning until we heard the familiar whirr of a motor. There was our letter carrier coming up the street, delivering mail as if nothing had happened. It was days before UPS and FedEx got their deliveries to our area straightened out, and my neighbor was still complaining a week after the storm about not being able to access the books and magazines she had bought for her e-reader (‘How’s that Kindle workin’ for ya now, sweetheart?’). We received several magazines by mail after the storm and never missed a mail delivery during the week the power was out. 
7. And another Jerseyan: “Our Republican governor pointed out that we seem to be getting a 'Storm of the Century' every couple of years. NOW do you believe in global warming?” Yep, the storm should be a wake-up call that it's time to move beyond simplistic slogans like “Go green, go paperless” and “Paper is all natural” and dig in to the serious work of making our media choices more earth friendly. 

Related articles:

• Print vs Digital: Who Survives The Zombies: A really fun infographic 
• Going Paperless Doesn't Mean Going Green, The New York Times Proves  
• 10 Questions About Toshiba's No-Print Day  
• 12 Telltale Signs That You Are A Printing Geek

Congress Is Fixin' To Fix the Postal Service

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Word is spreading of a bipartisan, bicameral effort among Congressional leaders to fix the U.S. Postal Service. Before anyone gets too excited, let's remember that "fix" can also mean:

• Castrate or spay
• Restore or repair
• Kill and preserve a specimen so that it can be studied under a microscope
• Give someone a dose of an illegal drug
• Take revenge (as in, "I'll fix him!")
• Arrange an outcome dishonestly, such as with a bribe or by stuffing a ballot box
• Establish something in a way that prevents it from changing (such as a fixed rate)

I'm just sayin'.

USPS Underestimates How Many Employees Will Take the Money and Run, Poll Says

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The majority of voters in a Dead Tree Edition poll predict that more than 20,000 APWU members will accept incentives to quit.

Of the 1,577 votes in the poll that ended tonight, only 16% agreed with a postal executive's recent estimate that 16,000 to 20,000 of the 115,000 eligible employees would accept the buyout package. Nearly 62% of voters predicted a higher number.

But voters also concluded that the "in the range of 35,000" estimate from William Burrus, former APWU president, is too high. Only one-fifth of voters predicted that more than 30,000 members of the Postal Service's largest labor union would call it quits.

The buyout package includes $15,000 and, for many employees, an even more valuable opportunity to take Voluntary Early Retirement.

Dead Tree Edition estimates that, if successful, the buyout program could reduce the Postal Service's compensation costs by more than $1 billion annually. But USPS seems to be doing little to present the buyout package in the best light, for example sending thousands of employees inaccurately low estimates of their retirement benefits.

Ironically, the APWU, which stands to suffer a significant loss of dues income as a result of the buyouts, is doing more than USPS to clear up the confusion about retirement benefits that may dampen response to the offer.

For example, it sent out a bulletin today informing members about the FERS annuity supplement, about which the Postal Service has been mostly silent. And Burrus urged those considering retirement to "take the money and run" because the Postal Service is unlikely to offer them a similar incentive in the future.

Related articles:

• USPS Seeks 'Soft Landing' For Downsized Employees, Donahoe Says 
• USPS Planning Retirement Incentives To Help Downsizing, Donahoe Testifies
• Response to Buyout Offer Better Than USPS Expected  
• New Poll: How Many Postal Workers Will Take the USPS/APWU Buyout Incentive?
• The Hidden Benefit of Postal Service Retirement 

Politicking Leads To Profitable October for USPS

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Bolstered by election-related mailings, the U.S. Postal Service experienced something unusual in October -- profitability.

USPS released preliminary financial results late yesterday showing net income of $61 million last month, the first month of Fiscal Year 2013, versus a budgeted loss of $244 million and last year's loss of $139 million.

If not for a $467 million charge for prefunded retiree health benefits, the agency's net would have been $528 million -- a profit margin of more than 8% on revenues of $6.03 million. Those prepayments have been likened to an interest-free loan to the federal treasury that are designed to obscure the true size of the federal budget deficit. (See Congress Hears the Truth About Postal Service Finances.)

The volume of Standard mail -- derided as "junk mail" by critics -- was up 16% over October 2011. Standard class revenue rose only 10%, evidence that the big volume increase was concentrated in the kind of low-priced mass mailings of letters used by political campaigns.

Also helping the bottom line was better productivity: The Postal Service delivered 9% more mail pieces than in October 2011 but needed only 3% more work hours to accomplish that.

One Patient's Surprising Post-Op Pain: A $12,000 Bill

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Meet David Galbraith. David is a successful business owner and generally healthy individual who has required relatively minimal extended healthcare in the course of his adulthood. That’s why he found his recent experience with an outpatient surgery quite jarring—and not very patient friendly at all.

When David exhibited symptoms, he was referred to a respected physician who accommodated a prompt appointment and swiftly booked a procedure. David, familiar with the high deductible of his insurance coverage, was pleased to take care of his situation in short order without concern regarding cost. After all, he understood his coverage, as he’d chosen it himself, and he’d asked the right questions in that process. Other than being told when and where to report and how to physically prepare for his simple operation, he received no other counsel from the healthcare provider, particularly regarding costs and payments.

The procedure went extremely well. “The whole thing took no more than 45 minutes,” David reports. “I arrived at the hospital at 7 a.m. and was home by 10:15.”

Perhaps that’s why it was so shocking when he received a bill for over $12,000 three weeks later. Though the dollar figure was unexpectedly high, David was most concerned that he’d been given no warning beforehand and that the bill received was so poorly presented. The language was cryptic, and while the statement was very detailed (“$57 for a hospital gown?!”), the information was not presented logically.

“There were excessive details, yet none of it really made sense to me as a patient,” David explains. “It was difficult to understand...and left me asking why (individual line items) cost so much and what could I have done differently to keep costs down.”

Ultimately, David was forced to spend valuable time on the phone with his insurance company and the provider trying to make sense of the bill and reconcile it accordingly. All told, he’s spent far more time dealing with billing than he did receiving care.

“Now that more of us are on high deductible plans, there needs to be simplified bills for patients,” he summarizes. “When we get a bill we don’t understand, it is both time consuming and frustrating to straighten everything out.”

For David, the frustration isn’t so much about the costs of the care (“It’s okay to pay fair market value…”). He’s most distraught by how poorly the information was conveyed. From obvious lack of financial counsel prior to the procedure to the baffling bill that showed up in the mail three weeks later, he experienced gaping holes in the communications process. Those holes would likely have been filled with a simple pre-admission conversation about billing and a patient friendly statement with clear summarization and key information called out.

Certainly, the walk in David’s shoes is well worth the journey, as his experience is an all too familiar one. Though many of us in our industry are genuinely committed to the idea of patient friendly billing standards, they are not always put into practice. We remain tethered to outdated modes of billing while the trends have catapulted forward. Here are three “Do Now” steps we should all employ to avoid putting patients in adversarial roles come billing time.

- Pre-admission Counsel and Estimations: It’s extremely helpful to provide patients a road map so they understand the financial aspects of their care before it occurs. It should be standard policy that all patients be counseled regarding payment responsibility and cost estimates based on their health coverage prior to admission.

- Online Pre-registration: By pre-registering patients online, providers have the opportunity to vet coverage issues, make determinations about charity care cases and offer patients more detail regarding potential payment responsibilities. This approach requires system updates, but it is well worth the effort. If your organization is not presently set up for online pre-registration, take this as your cue to pursue this solution.

- Friendly Billing Statements and Options: Apply the HFMA standards for patient friendly billing to your statements immediately. Redesign the statements to be more patient-friendly, with key information highlighted and details appropriately summarized for more simple comprehension. Give patients more ways to pay by offering online account management.

At Emdeon, we understand that patients who are confused about their financial responsibilities are more likely to pick up the phone and call your billing department instead of picking up their pen to write a check for payment. That’s why developing a clear and concise, patient-friendly billing statement is important for your bottom line. Call 877.EMDEON.6 (877.363.3666) or visit us online to discover how Emdeon ExpressBill Services can help improve cash flow at your organization.







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