Upcoming changes to the Kentucky Retirement Systems could cut insurance coverage for some dependents of retired police officers, firefighters and more.
Under a nearly 60-year-old state statute, dependents of those hazardous duty retirees would lose their coverage past the age of 22.
The current age cut-off is 26, in accordance with the federal Affordable Care Act. Retirees with twenty years of service are entitled to 100 percent coverage for spouses and dependents.
KRS Executive Director Bill Thielen says the state began covering dependents up to age 26 in 2011.
“However, we later determined that we had been doing that mistakenly because our statutes and our regulations define a dependent to be between 18 and 22 years of age and a full time student,” Thielen said.
Thielen says the new cutoff takes effect January 1st, causing nearly 750 hazardous duty retiree dependents to lose state health coverage or pay for it out of pocket.
"We did not want to do that in the middle of the plan year," Thielen said. "We needed to give our members plenty of notice of the change and we're planning on doing that during the open enrollment period and by certified mail to all of the affected members."
Other retirement systems including Kentucky Teachers' Retirement offer subsidies but not outright state healthcare coverage to dependents up to the age of 26.
