1 - The day of a U.S. citizen’s sixty-fifth (65th) birthday month that they become eligible to receive Medicare benefits.
2 – The annual percentage of the Health and Benefit Plans population that lose their HRA debit card privileges for either no substantiation, untimely substantiation or improper substantiation of their debit card usage.
3 – The number of months before a retired individual turns 65 that they become eligible to sign up for Part A and Part B of Medicare. It is also the number of months that the individual has after they turn 65 to enroll in Medicare Part A and Part B.
What happens if an individual doesn’t sign up? I guess you are going to reserve your seat at next month’s educational meeting to find out. Suffice it to say, it’s not good.
4 – The number of reasons that would cause an HRA debit card to be permanently deactivated.
5 – There are five additional methodologies that a participant can utilize to determine if they will have to make a shortage of hours payment if they lose their shortage of hours’ notice. To learn what they are, read this month’s article titled “S.O.H or S.O.L” or reserve your seat at next months Benefit Funds educational seminar.
Coincidentally, five (5) is also the percentage of the Health and Benefit Plan’s Summary Plan Description book that is dedicated to the HRA program!
6 – The number of weeks, and days in advance of the September 30th shortage of hours self-payment due date that the Funds 2024 fourth quarter shortage of hours reminder notice were mailed out.
10 – The day of September in which the first presidential debate between Kamela Harris and Donald Trump will occur.
13 – The number of separate and distinct newsletter articles that have been written about the HRA benefit in the last five years.
16 – Days until Mr. Moises (Mo) Flores will once again be conducting one-on-one consultations with the curious and interested participants of the Defined Contribution Plan. If you have not done so already, make an appointment with Mo and afterwards, stay for the membership meeting.
By the way, you don’t need Mo to be the reason that you are attending September’s membership meeting. You can do that for a plethora of reasons, such as, but not limited to that you care about the organization or are interested in the new sound system in the meeting hall, wish to participate, and/or desire to learn what is going on and to contribute.
30 – The are thirty days and sixteen and a half hours until the Benefit Office will no longer be able to accept any shortage of hours payments for fourth quarter Health and Benefit Fund coverage.
33 – The number of days until the Benefit Funds educational seminar for Active and Early retirees. As communicated last month, participants wishing to attend this evening seminar (starts at 6:00 P.M.) must call the Fund Office to secure a seat for that event!
39 – The number of days until the Benefit Funds educational seminar for Medicare eligible retirees. Similar to the other educational seminar, participants who want to attend this meeting will need to secure their spot. Unlike the other meeting, this event will be held during the morning and will begin at 8:00 A.M.
45 – That is the percentage of Defined Contribution Plan participants that have to date logged into Empower to secure their account and have set up their preferences. While a slight improvement over last month, it’s still a terrible percentage.
60 – Sixty the number of days an individual has to substantiate any unconfirmed HRA Debit Card purchase with the proper and appropriate documentation.
66 – Days until Tuesday, November 5, 2024. If that day means nothing to you, well, what can we say. Actually, a lot. But we are not going to except that you not knowing strongly suggests the need for the reinstatement of civics classes within the grade school curriculum.
If only there was some super easy and convenient way that you could find out the significance of that date…………...? If only….
77 – The number of participants that had insufficient hours reported on their behalf during the second work quarter of 2024. For those keeping count, this means that the Fund issued and mailed out seventy-seven (77) shortage of hours notices and posted seventy-seven shortage of hours explanation of benefits. With the SOH reminder notices posted both within the Funds website, and newsletters coupled with the date being mentioned at the membership meeting, there should be no reason as to why someone misses completely or is late in their submission of their shortage of hours payment.
242 – The page number within the Health and Benefit Plan’s Summary Plan Description book that Plan’s HRA benefit provision begins.
341 – The page number within the Health and Benefit Plan’s Summary Plan Description Book that the Self-payment provision is listed.
353 – The page number within the Health and Benefit Plan’s Summar Plan Description Book where the Shortage of Hours provision can be found.
1882 – The Central Labor Council of New York City created the first Labor Day holiday back in 1882.
200,000 - The number of years that that Human Sapiens have walked the Planet. While that is a short amount of time in the scheme of things, what is sobering is the fact that as a species we have progressed to the point where more people die today in our country of “diseases of excess” than any other type of illness or malady…., combined.
Couple that with the sobering statistics within August’s newsletter’s “By the Numbers” and well……., it becomes clear that we all got to do better at becoming healthier.