Did your company or municipality recieve its share of the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP) funds?

For those of you who don’t know about this program, the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP) was established by section 1102 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted on March 23, 2010. Congress appropriated $5 billion for this program to be used by plan sponsors to reduce the cost of providing healthcare benefits to their early retirees, those retirees between the ages of 55 and 65.

The funds are almost exhausted and the Centers for Medicare Services is no longer accepting applications.

This was effectively free money provided by ACA that could have helped your company or municipality to reduce its out of pockets costs.  In this economic environment, it does not seem that this type of opportunity should have been ignored.

If your current adviser did not inform you of this program or push you to access these funds you should probably ask why.   Perhaps they were not aware of the program.  If so, this is all the more reason to consider working with an adviser that focuses on developments in the retiree health care space.

The attached link lists recipients of funds distributed under this program through December 2nd 2011.

http://cciio.cms.gov/resources/files/Files2/12092011/errp_disbursement_12_02_2011_508.pdf