Already, Miller is wondering whether he will be able to afford the knee surgery he had planned for later this year.
Currently, GM pays retirees on Medicare $76.20 a month to help pay for supplemental coverage and also provides secondary coverage through CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield in Maryland. How much the company contributes depends on the plan a retiree chooses. Combined, the coverage helps pay for additional medical, dental, vision, prescription drug and extended care coverage.
Supplemental Medicare coverage can cost $800 to $3,000 a year, according to the Baltimore County Department of Aging. The CareFirst "Medi Gap" plans range in cost from $55 to $155 per month for people ages 65 to 69. The premiums increase with age.
Retirees will have to transfer their Medicare benefits in 63 days or risk not being covered for pre-existing conditions, said Arnold Eppel of the Baltimore County Department of Aging.
Benefits disappear
Workers at iconic American companies could once count on collecting health benefits well into their retirement years. But these benefits have increasingly become targets of cash-strapped companies.
A recent study by the Families & Work Institute, a nonprofit that researches family life, found that there were cutbacks in all categories of the "benefits pool" arena, from the number of companies contributing to 401(k) retirement accounts to the number cutting back on how much they contribute to employee premiums.
"This may seem like an individual problem for GM, but it's a much larger issue," said Ellen Galinsky, president of the institute.
Baltimore GM retirees said the company has been slowly chipping away at their benefits for years.
John Cullina worked at GM for 30 years, mostly as a supervisor in the car seat division at the Broening Highway plant. The Glen Burnie resident has health coverage through the military but worries about his colleagues.
"I think it's going to be a terrible blow," he said. "There are going to be a lot of people hurting.
"As salary people, we were always told that one of your benefits is health care," Cullina said. "Now, we're going to lose all that."
Ed Watts, 71, expects that he will have to eat out less and make other lifestyle changes in order to pay the additional health care costs.
"I'm going to have to give up some other things," said Watts, who worked for GM for 30 years as an engineer and later in labor relations. "It's going to change my budget."
What GM is doing
* Eliminating health coverage for salaried retirees 65 and older
* Cutting thousand of jobs through attrition, early retirement and buyouts
* Eliminating executive bonuses
* Reducing sales and marketing budgets
* Selling assets to raise $2.4 billion
* Suspending dividends
