Home >  Business

Sunday, March 24, 2002

By Pamela Gaynor, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

When the 12,000 LTV Steel Corp. retirees who live in the region lose their health benefits at the end of the month, hospitals in communities that were homes to the company's mills will feel their pain, both in a human sense and financially.

"There will be an impact" said Marcie Caplan, chief executive officer at UPMC South Side Hospital, the health-care institution closest to the homes of many who once worked in LTV's mills on the South Side and in Hazelwood.

Caplan said reimbursements from LTV's health insurance plans for retirees represented $1.4 million in revenue to UPMC South Side last year, or about 3.5 percent of the hospital's $40 million total.

Other hospitals likely to be affected have yet to perform that calculation, but they, too, said the retirees' plight was a concern.

"The best I can tell you right now is it will obviously be a significant hit to both of our hospitals," said Scott Monit, spokesman for Heritage Valley Health System, which operates the Medical Center in Beaver and Sewickley Valley Hospital.

Both of those institutions and Aliquippa Community Hospital serve large numbers of retirees who worked at the once sprawling and since demolished LTV Aliquippa Works.

Aliquippa Community Hospital officials said some 5,940 of the LTV retirees in the region live in their service territory, an area that overlaps communities that Heritage Valley's hospitals also serve.

Of the total, 1,600 are not yet eligible for Medicare and will lose their insurance coverage completely unless they can afford to sign up for a health plan available to individuals or to continue their current insurance coverage through the federally mandated COBRA program. To help ease their plight, the hospital is offering interest-free credit to families who are ineligible for government or private health benefit programs.

Those eligible for Medicare will be able to choose among some relatively affordable Medicare HMOs, with monthly premiums of as little as $9, so that they're covered for most of the hospital and physician services Medicare does completely insure. The financial challenge for those with Medicare will be paying prescription bills, which Medicare doesn't cover at all. The maximum prescription benefit offered by any of the region's Medicare HMOs is $1,400 a year.

Those who aren't yet eligible for Medicare, however, will have to find coverage for bills from hospitals and doctors as well as for the prescriptions they use

Hospitals said they would work to help the retirees who qualify for Medicaid or low-income health plans such as Highmark Inc.'s Special Care program. And Aliquippa Hospital is working with third parties to try to develop a more affordable insurance program for retirees in its communities.

But hospital services for those who either don't qualify for low-income insurance plans or Medicaid would likely come at the hospitals' expense, said Caplan. "Needless to say, [the uninsured] won't be turned away."