[Baltimore Sun] State retirees should have affordable drug coverage | READER COMMENTARY
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I retired from the state of Maryland in 2016 thinking I would have my benefits for the rest of my life, but starting in January 2025 the state is taking away our prescription plan once you turn 65 (“Retired state workers face financial hardship,” Oct. 29).
At a recent meeting to discuss benefits, I was told drug coverage wasn’t affordable. Yet the state gets over a billion dollars every year from the lottery and officials recently bragged about how the state is receiving hundreds of millions more from legal marijuana sales. Yet it’s not affordable?
Maryland has provided benefits for certain undocumented people but they don’t have money for the retirees. This amounts to taking money from the retired to give it to people who aren’t even citizens.
State Sen. Mike McKay, a Republican who represents Allegany, Garrett and Washington counties, sponsored a bill, Senate Bill 349, to grandfather these benefits to all employees hired before 2011 but it never made it out of committee. If Democrats are for the middle class, why did they take away our prescription plan?
— Howard Johnson, Cumberland
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