LTV Execs Hang Onto Health Coverage

January 23, 2002 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - About 13,000 former LTV plant managers and executives will get to keep their company-paid health and life insurance benefits through February under an agreement announced this week.

According to a Cleveland Plain Dealer report, LTV executives had been particularly alarmed by the steel maker’s announcement earlier this month that it was paying the executives’ benefits only until January 31.

As part of the agreement, LTV will provide both information on retirees’ rights to transfer to other plans, and information on COBRA, the federal law that allows participants to continue their health coverage for a time after their employment has been terminated.

The company, which sought bankruptcy protection a year ago, is liquidating its idled steel mills in Cleveland, Indiana and Illinois.

More than 45,000 hourly retirees already lost their company health coverage. Their health insurance now is paid through a trust fund that LTV agreed to establish during labor negotiations in 1994. When that fund is empty, those retirees will have to fund the entire insurance cost.

«