September 2005

A Postcard from Shanghai

Ever thought of teaching abroad? After 34 years in Brockton, Massachusetts, classrooms, social studies teacher Peter Toomey kicked off his retirement by taking a new high school teaching job—in Shanghai, China. His report:

I’d thought about retirement for a while, but had mixed feelings. What would I do with myself?

I’ve had wanderlust my whole life, and had been to China twice before, so with the agreement of my wife Linda (who has two more years to go before retirement), I accepted a six-month teaching position in China.

China  is hungry for native English-speaking U.S. teachers. The economy is the fastest growing in the world, and the government has decided that students need to communicate well in English. I can’t help but be impressed by how fast China is changing, and how vigorous its people are. My colleagues are all young and full of energy.

I get a salary of $800 a month; not much by U.S. standards, but when you add in free room and board, it’s more than enough for me to enjoy life quite well.

My classes are a dream. Chinese students are very polite and appreciative. No discipline problems, and everyone does his or her homework. Class sizes can be high, but I teach three classes daily with no more than 12 students in a class. Classes are 40 minutes long. My current job is a lark compared to the rigors of a Brockton public school. I’ve never had it so good!

I teach world history to junior high students. I like them, and they like me. Kids are kids no matter where one is. They like to laugh and have fun. They like it when you make the material they are studying interesting.

I miss my wife and family, but because we can communicate daily via e-mail, somehow the distance doesn’t feel so great. Being surrounded by 17 million Chinese (the population of Shanghai ) doesn’t hurt either. If I get antsy or blue, I just hop on the subway into the heart of a dynamic city. The subway is supermodern, easy to use, and close to my school. I learned very quickly how to hail a cab and “subway” (“Ditee”). My Mandarin Chinese is very basic, and one can not get along in English (unlike in Europe ). But I have never let myself get beyond a situation that I couldn’t remedy by taking public transportation back to my school.

I don’t know where all of this—teaching in China —is heading, but it’s a nice feeling to be, maybe, starting something again. Why does retirement have to be an end? There are fabulous options in life after retirement. Charge!

Contact Toomey at dubide5@hotmail.com.

Quick Tips

Could teaching overseas be for you? Some tips to guide your search:

Ponder your reasons. You’ll be enjoying life in a different setting, but remember that other opportunities, such as study tours or extended hosteling, offer a similar payoff. Be sure you’re ready for the demands of teaching another time around.

Do your homework. Unfortunately, “teach abroad” scams are proliferating. Be especially skeptical of programs (often advertised on the Web) that require placement fees or use a post office box instead of a regular office address.

When in doubt, you may want to consider more established programs such as Peace Corps or Global Volunteers. Get community support. Some teaching jobs are unpaid or may even require you to pay a fee. But you need not come up with the money on your own. Many folks who volunteer raise money from local organizations such as civic clubs and churches to support their work overseas.

For a comprehensive guide to teaching and other volunteer opportunities abroad, see How to Live Your Dream of Volunteering Overseas (Penguin Publishing, $17). Or start at www.teachabroad.com.

September 2005

Collecting Motorcycles—
109 of Them!

When Les Snavely was 20, he saw a photo of his grandfather astride a 1911 Wagner motorcycle. That small, back-and-white image struck a chord in him and prompted what would become Snavely’s 42-year hobby of collecting antique bikes, all of them arranged neatly today in his garage in Bowman, North Dakota.

People travel long distances to gaze at those 109 bikes. Snavely has a sentimental attachment to each one—especially the 1911 Wagner, the same model and make as his grandfather’s. It took the collector seven years to find that one.

Snavely is quite accustomed to large collections. For 30 years he worked as a librarian at Bowman  High School, caring for more than 30,000 books—the largest library in the region.  

Since retiring in 2002, Snavely misses many aspects of education, especially the daily interactions with students. But retired life has its perks too. “By far the best part is not working by the bell,” he says.

With his spare time, Snavely has gotten involved in local politics, travel, and the NDEA Retired Association.

“Everyone should get involved just a little bit,” Snavely stresses. “When working in the classroom, teachers don’t have much time, but they do have needs. Luckily, retired educators have the time to participate and are now demanding to be involved.”

—Daniel Moise

Painting Her Town Red, Blue, Green,…

Maine  retiree Claudia Mahlman was instantly enamored of the coastal fishing village of Lubec when she moved there 35 years ago. “My house is on top of a hill, and when I look out, I’m surrounded by water on three sides.” she says. “This area is just one gorgeous view after another. I thought to myself, ‘I’ll never run out of things to paint in Lubec.’”

But duties as a librarian at the William S. Cohen School and community activities left little time for Mahlman to explore her love of art. That changed in 2001 when Mahlman retired after 34 years in education and enrolled in a class with a local artist. Soon she was painting all the picturesque seascapes and foliage that Lubec had to offer.

At press time, Mahlman had completed 59 paintings. Several have been displayed in lighthouse galleries and many have been sold at substantial prices. “I was surprised when my paintings went up on the wall with those of people who have been painting much longer!” she says.

Mahlman says she never thought she would be this busy in her new life, but “It just seemed to fall into place that a hobby would become profitable in my old age.”

—D.M.

September 2005

A Lifetime Fighter For Rights
and Respect

When North Carolina retiree Agnes Chavis started working with special education students in 1967, she was astonished at the discrimination they encountered. “Other teachers didn’t want them in the classroom and other students wouldn’t play with them,” she recalls. “I fought to show that [my students] could go to homeroom and eat with other children—and deserved to be treated fairly.”

This American Indian empathized with her students. Sometimes, when they came to her crying, she would cry with them. “The children felt discriminated against, as had I growing up,” says Chavis, a Lumbee Indian and the daughter of tenant farmers.

“I remember walking to school and having the White children pass by on their big, yellow bus—they didn’t have buses for the Indian students,” she says. “I also remember the theater being divided into three sections: White, Black, and Indian. I think sometimes people forget that ‘Whites only’ left out Indians, too.”

When Chavis completed college and became an educator, American Indian children still faced big odds. She taught at her former school, the all-Indian Ashpole Center, for 12 years with outdated supplies and overcrowded classrooms—as many as 52 students per room.

“We taught our children that they had to be the best,” Chavis says. “We saw them get into great colleges. A lot of them have come back home to help their people.”

Years later, Chavis began teaching special education students at an integrated Robeson County school. Her advice: “Don’t go in there feeling sorry for them—that doesn’t work. If they work on a slower pace, then you work with them at that pace.” She eventually became a resource teacher, visiting all Robeson County schools to ensure that students with special needs had proper care and equal rights.

In 1990, after 47 years as an educator, Chavis retired to care for her ailing father. But for this self-proclaimed workaholic, retired life is easily as busy as active employment. She is president of the Robeson County Retired School Personnel and vice-president of North Carolina Retired School Personnel. She is also a volunteer for breast cancer awareness and hospice care. And she’s an NEA Board of Directors member for NEA-Retired.

The National Indian Education Association named Chavis the National Indian Educator of the Year in 1982, and she received an NEA medallion for her work in women’s leadership. In July 2005, NEA awarded her the Leo Reano Memorial Award in recognition of her efforts to promote social justice.

At 79, Chavis shows no signs of slowing down. She lives by a saying her mother taught her: “It’s better to wear out than to rest out.”

—Daniel Moise

For More

The National Indian Education Association  has extensive information about the history and current stateof education for Indian children. NIEA and NEA work together extensively.

You’ll also find information on American Indian and Alaska Native children and the achievement gaps.  

Nearly half of American Indian and Alaska Native children drop out of high school without a regular diploma, according to the Harvard Civil Rights Project.

September 2005

Deanna Lawson

BACKGROUND
I’ve taught middle school and other grades in the Coffee County Tennessee School District for 23 years. I’m a past president of my local Association, and former member of the TEA Board of Directors.

What got you involved as an NEA Pre-Retired member?

The feeling that I wanted to keep contributing to the system that has meant everything to my family. My brother and I both had a public education, and we were the first from my family to go to college. Now I have four grandchildren, and two of them live right here in Coffee County. I want to extend the tradition of great public education to my grandkids and their generation.

Kathy McVay

BACKGROUND
I taught kindergarten for 34 years in Perry County, Alabama. I’ve been an active local Association president, AEA president, and now I’m vice president of my county Retired Association.

How do you like retirement so far?

Very much, but I’ve stayed active. Advocacy on behalf of school employees, active and retired, is not something I can afford to slow down right now. In Alabama, we have to be prepared to defend our education budget and Education Trust Fund every legislative session. Our governor would love to get his hands on our Trust Fund, and we worked hard—thousands of teachers, ESPs, and retirees—to build a bipartisan coalition in the legislature that stopped the fund from being raided. Education is the future of Alabama. If you look at our state prison population, what they most share is a lack of good education.

Carl Taylor

BACKGROUND
I taught eighth-grade reading and language arts, specializing in kids with discipline problems, for 40 years. I was president of my local Association in Bellingham, Washington. I’m currently vice president of NEA-Retired for the state of Washington.

How are you spending retirement?

Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t spend retirement in too much leisure because my wife, Jodie, has 10 more years to teach. But we take our motor home on short trips close to home. We love mountains and water and we see our share of both. In the summers, we travel in Europe through a program in which we lead tours. I like to stay active in education as well, and during the year I usually lead three or four seminars to prepare teachers for retirement. I also like working with new teachers in their first five years on the job. Three days a week, I do charity work for my church. It’s a lot like Association work—just with a different vocabulary.

Tread Carefully

Is the new Medicare drug coverage better than driving to Canada? Better than your existing plan? Better than nothing? Here’s how to tell.

Look before you leap.

Don't wait more than six months to decide on a Medicare drug plan.

Watch out for enticing mailings and phone calls from HMOs.

Beware the doughnut hole.

Also inside:

• Prescriptions for Healthier Medicine
• Two big questions about Medicare Plan D:

By Dave Winans

Picture this for relaxation: a 70-mile drive across the North American prairie—through low valleys, along the tranquil Mouse River, and past wild grass, trees, farms, and old country churches. Every three months, NEA-Retired member Shirley Lindquist and her husband Darvin make this journey, from Kenmare, North Dakota, across the Canadian border to Carnduff, Saskatchewan.

It’s a happy tradition, ending with a stop at the couple’s favorite roadside restaurant and a visit to their Canadian daughter. But it also marks a curious ritual. When the Lindquists get to Carnduff, they first head to a local physician’s office where they hand over signed prescription slips—for drugs such as Fosamax, Methotrexate, and Sulfasalazine. After getting their prescriptions initialed by the doctor, the Lindquists go to the local pharmacy to fill the prescriptions and benefit from Canada ’s drug price controls.

The savings are worth every gallon of gas. Just one example: The Lindquists pay $135.96 Canadian ($109.01 U.S.  at a recent exchange rate) for a three-month supply of Fosamax pills, used to rebuild thinning bones. The price back home: $239.75 U.S.

Shirley, who taught grades 5–6 for 34 years, estimates that the total drug savings per Canadian trip equals one of her monthly Social Security checks. For Darvin, who lives with diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis and who retired from the private sector without a pension, the Canadian discount means nothing less than independence.

“If we paid full price for those drugs, my husband would be in a wheelchair,” Shirley says quite bluntly. She laments taking business from her hometown pharmacist, “but we do what we can to survive. We’re hoping something will come up to help us, though, because eventually we won’t be able to drive to Canada.”

For the Lindquists and some 100 other Kenmare residents who make the Canadian commute—and for the millions who can’t make the trek—there is a glimmer of hope.

The Medicare Prescription and Modernization Act of 2003 includes subsidized prescription drug coverage for Medicare recipients under a new Part D—with its own separate, monthly premium.

You, too, may be able to benefit from the Part D prescription drug benefit. But there are some big traps to avoid—traps that could have you spending a lot more than you expect, or even losing money.

Here’s our guide to the new prescription drug benefit:

Look before you leap.

The new Medicare drug plan is not mandatory. The choice to participate or not is yours. And if you, like many NEA-Retired members, have drug coverage under your current retiree health plan, you’d better watch your mailbox.

No later than November 15, employer and union retirement plans must send each participating member a “creditable coverage notice” that says their current drug coverage is worse than, the same as, or better than Medicare Part D. If your plan is the same as or better than the new Medicare plan, you may want to stay with what you have.

But keep paying attention. “Your plan may be eligible to receive a bonus payment from the federal government,” says NEA health care analyst Carol Malone. “You’ll need to watch that the plan doesn’t reduce drug benefits, and that it uses the subsidy to improve drug or other benefits.” 

Don’t wait more than six months to decide on a Medicare drug plan.

If your current drug coverage isn’t as good as Medicare’s, both your employer plan and you will have to make quick decisions.

The new federal drug plan goes into effect January 1, 2006. Barring an implementation delay, Medicare is allowing a six-month initial enrollment window for current Medicare enrollees to join a Part D plan or a managed care plan that includes prescription drug coverage. That six months will run from November 15, 2005, to May 15, 2006. If you miss the window and decide to sign up for Part D later, you may have to pay a penalty: an extra cost tacked onto your premium for the rest of your life.

Medicare-eligible people who continue to work and receive drug benefits from an employer plan will have just 63 days to enroll in Part D once they retire and are no longer covered by their employer’s plan.

Watch out for enticing mailings and phone calls from HMOs.

Like other retirees, Florida Education Association-Retired Advisory Board member Joan King reports being bombarded with mail and phone calls from private health care providers. That’s because the 2003 Medicare law offers tidy federal subsidies for private operators to enter the Medicare market through Part C, now called Medicare Advantage. As a result, seniors are hearing high-flying HMO/PPO promises of more choices, better benefits, and lower cost-sharing if they shift from the traditional Medicare program to an HMO or PPO.

Joining an HMO or PPO isn’t mandatory, but those calls and letters can be persuasive. The very thought of HMOs and PPOs plunging into Medicare makes King and other retirees jittery. “In our experience,” King notes, “HMOs change the drug coverage and the formulary, and so many HMOs die on the vine when they find it’s difficult to make a profit.”

Why do HMOs have financial problems? Dee Mahan of Families USA (FUSA), a non-profit, nonpartisan group, says it’s because HMOs and PPOs are not as cost-effective as traditional Medicare, due to their higher administrative and marketing costs.

A sobering thought: Between 1993 and 2003, 2.4 million subscribers to Medicare Advantage’s predecessor program, Medicare+Choice, lost their coverage and had to return to traditional Medicare—as their health plans scaled back or ended participation in the federal program. According to HHS, the number of insurers offering Medicare+Choice plans decreased by 48.3 percent during this period.

Beware the doughnut hole.

You may not be able to avoid it, but at least you can know how much of a bite it’s going to take out of your income.

The doughnut hole was inserted into Medicare Part D to save the government money by getting you to pay more of your drug costs.

Here’s how it works:

You sign up for Medicare Part D, and start paying your premiums, $35 a month on average in 2006. And you start buying the prescription drugs you need.

For the first $250, you pay every penny, in addition to your monthly premium, because there’s a $250 deductible for Part D.

But say your bills are much higher than $250. After you’ve spent the deductible, Medicare will start picking up three quarters of your drug costs. You still pay one quarter. You have to spend roughly $800 on drugs for the year before you reach the break-even point, where Part D has paid you more than it cost you in premiums.

(You might say, “I don’t spend that much.” But the problem is, you can’t know how much you’ll spend on drugs next year. That’s why we all need insurance.)

But now we’re venturing into the land of the traitorous doughnut hold, and when your drug costs reach $2,850, you fall right in! You keep paying premiums, but Medicare pays zero—not one cent—you’ve piled up another $2,850 in drug bills.

At that point, if you haven’t starved to death in order to pay your giant drug bills, you finally clamber up the other edge of the hole and the Medicare benefit reappears. And on far side of the hole, Medicare is much more generous, paying 95 percent of whatever remaining drug costs you have for the year.

The bottom line: If you spend more than about $800 for drugs (and at U.S. drug prices, many people do), you’ll get at least some benefit from Part D, and even if you don’t, you’ll get some peace of mind.

The calculation gets even more complicated if you were planning to buy your drugs from Canada, because you have to give up that savings in order to qualify for Part D. For you, the break-even point at which you actually start seeing some net benefit may be much higher than $800.

That’s another reason why we need a Congress that’s willing to buck the drug companies and stand up for retirees.

Prescriptions for a Healthier Medicine

Medicare, the federal health insurance program that covers 42 million people—both seniors and under-65s with permanent disabilities—is 40 years old this year. If you want Medicare to survive another 40 and to bring down those zooming drug prices, here’s a prescription or two:

• Stand up for the traditional Medicare program. It’s easy to be distracted by the threat of Social Security privatization while profit-driven HMOs and drug companies quietly carve up Medicare. If traditional Medicare, with its wide choice of doctors, works well for you, hang on to that red, white, and blue card—and tell your members of Congress why they should preserve and improve the program.

“When an HMO or PPO competes with Medicare, it skims off the healthy people and Medicare is left with the sicker folks,” points out NEA lobbyist Al Campos. That translates into higher premiums and cost-sharing.

• Donate to NEA’s Fund for Children and Public Education. It’s a good way to send advocates of affordable health care—and public education—to the next Congress in 2006. NEA supports legislation to close the “doughnut hole,” to allow importation of FDA-approved medicines, and—perhaps the most obvious reform—to authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate prices with drug companies. But those proposals will go nowhere if NEA members don’t help elect candidates committed to holding down drug costs.
• Do your homework. Stay abreast of this critical problem. For information on the new Medicare prescription drug plan, check with your local Social Security office, call 1-800-MEDICARE, or visit www.familiesusa.org and go to “The Medicare Road Show Kit.” For more Medicare facts, go to the Kaiser Family Foundation site at www.kff.org. For data on drug prices, effectiveness, and safety, visit Consumers Union’s useful site at www.CRBestBuyDrugs.org. And for more on your Medicare rights, go to www.medicarerights.org.

—D.W.

Two big questions about Medicare Plan D:

Will this law bring down drug prices?

Not likely, because the law explicitly forbids the agency that runs Medicare from negotiating better prices. That’s like fighting for seniors with both hands tied behind your back. The Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) is under no such restrictions, and it gets discounts of up to 30 or 40 percent below wholesale prices for VA hospitals, the Defense Department, and the Coast Guard, according to Dee Mahan of Families USA. Medicare, with the clout of 42 million subscribers, could do even better—which is probably why the drug companies lobbied so hard to put that clause in the law that forbids bargaining. With price bargaining, Medicare could afford to provide much better coverage for seniors at no extra cost to the federal treasury.

What’s behind the drive toward privatized senior health care?

No investigative reporting needed here. In election year 2004, President Bush declared that “the best health care system is that health care system generated in the private markets,” and the Republican Party platform reiterated the Administration’s desire to “make sure there are incentives for the private sector to develop new and inexpensive drugs.” Minnesotan Larry Koenck begs to differ with this approach. “Until we get costs under control,” he maintains, “drug companies and HMOs will dictate prices and we’ll never get them under control. Private enterprise doesn’t always work; we can’t seem to learn from other nations, like Canada.”

Or a U.S. government agency like the Department of Veterans Affairs. Is it too late for the Lindquists, Joan King, and Larry Koenck to enlist in their nation’s service?

For more information on Part D, go to www.cms.hhs.gov.

September 2005

Protecting Our Kids

Hello!

I am honored to be your new president of NEA-Retired, elected at the 2005 annual meeting.

Our out-going leader, Jim Sproul, left the organization much stronger than it was when he started his presidency, and I hope to do the same. I will be depending on you for ideas and feedback.  You will find my e-mail address at the bottom of this column: I’d love to hear from you!

Today, I want to talk about an insult to retirees.

To the politicians who want to privatize Social Security, today’s retirees are a formidable obstacle. They know we believe in a secure retirement, and, more than any other age group, we vote. So they have been telling us not to worry—our own incomes will be safe. It is only younger people who will have to suffer.

That’s the insult: They seem to think we care only about us.

But they’re wrong. We have children and grandchildren and former students. We’re not going to say, “I’ve got mine, too bad for everyone else.”

That’s especially true for retirees from public education, because we dedicated our working lives to an American institution that’s all about the community taking care of all of its members, not just some.

So I’m delighted that the privatizers seem to be losing their bet. They counted on us pulling back from the battle, but we haven’t. Retirees, and public retirees in particular, are leading the fight to save Social Security and to save the other pension plans that are the foundation of security in retirement.

And we’ll keep doing it, for the kids.

You can help even if you have only a few minutes. Go to www.nea.org/lac/socsec to see how.

—Barbara Matteson
matteson@dakotacom.net

September 2005

Two New Medigap Plans Here’s a guide to what Plans K and L have to offer.

Medicare usually covers only about half of the medical costs of America ’s senior citizens. For most people, that’s just not enough security; they don’t want giant medical bills looming over them. So they look for plans that supplement Medicare coverage. Some can get coverage through their school district, or, if they are married, through their spouse’s employer. But many people buy so-called “Medigap” plans to fill in the holes in Medicare.

Today, there are 10 such plans, Medigap Plans A through J. Starting January 1, there will be two new ones, Medigap K and L. (If you bought your Medigap policy before 1992 or live in Massachusetts, Minnesota, or Wisconsin, your Medigap policy may be called something else.)

The good news: These plans will have lower monthly premiums. The bad news: Some co-payments will be higher. So you need to judge whether the lower premiums are worth the extra risk.

Here’s an overview:

What are the Out-of-Pocket Annual Limits?

Plan K has a $4,000 out-of-pocket annual limit. For Plan L, it’s $2,000.   Once you meet the annual limit, the plan pays 100 percent of the Medicare Part A and Part B co-payments and coinsurance for the rest of the calendar year. 

But those limits don’t apply to any money you spend on the Medicare Part B deductible, which is not covered under either Plan K or L.

In addition, charges from your doctor that exceed Medicare-approved amounts, called “excess charges,” are not covered and do not count toward the out-of-pocket limit—you will have to pay these excess charges. 

What about the NEA Medicare Supplement Insurance Program?

The new Medigap Plans K and L will be available to members through the NEA MemberCare Medicare Supplement Program  beginning January 1, 2006.

—Doug Terwilliger, NEA Member Benefits

More Help

There’s no way to make the new Medigap plans simple, but some Web sites are making an excellent effort to explain your choices clearly. Try these:

• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,  which runs Medicare.
• The Center for Medicare Advocacy, a non-partisan organization that represents people who are having problems with Medicare and is also involved in efforts to improve Medicarecoverage. This site links to adiscussion group where you can ask a question or post a comment.
• The Medicare Rights Center, which helps people find out what they need to know about this complex system. There’s also a list of hotline phone numbers you can call in each state to learn more.
• The Kaiser Family Foundation offers information about Medigap, Medicare, andprescription drug coverage.