Retirees Update
By Tom Moutes, RLACEI Legislative Director
Email: Tom.Moutes@RLACEI.org
For those of you who have attended RLACEI events over the past many years, you probably are used to hearing LACERS updates from Lita Payne and Alex Rabrenovich.
Lita recently retired as LACERS Assistant General Manager after many years working to oversee the provision of retirement benefits and has expansive knowledge of Retiree health benefits.
Alex, who has headed up LACERS Health Benefits and Wellness Division for many years, is threating to retire later this year!
LACERS has administered Retiree health plans for more than 20 years. Prior to that, the City’s Personnel Dept. administered the Retiree health benefits in addition to the active employee benefits. For most of the time that LACERS has been administering the benefits, Lita and Alex have been leading the way to help ensure retirees and their dependents have access to great and reasonably priced health benefits.
Under Lita and Alex’s leadership, LACERS developed a year-long process that has been very beneficial in making smart additions and changes to health benefits. They also have worked extremely hard to ensure that insurance premium increases stay under actuarial trend rates so that our subsidies produce greater buying power.
The process that Lita and Alex have overseen starts almost immediately after open enrollment and includes tasks such as reviewing general usage data to determine how existing benefits are working; assessing the current insurance offerings; receiving bids from the carriers; negotiating for better rates and additional benefits; getting the rates passed by the LACERS Board; and conducting open enrollment. After which, they get to start all over again!
Lita and Alex also have been instrumental in bringing you the LACERS Well program, which promotes healthy lifestyles so we all can make the most of our retirement years.
While I’m confident LACERS will continue to work hard to provide us with great insurance plans at very reasonable rates, Lita and Alex have had a special and long run of doing just that. They deserve our recognition and gratitude.
Happy retirement Lita and (perhaps) Alex!
