RETIREE SERVICES

PBS serves as your link to maximizing the benefits available from your health care plans. Our carefully trained Service Center staff will assist client retirees with plan and claim information, plan coordination with Medicare, enrollment, eiligibility, and problem resolution. Call us Toll Free at 800.204.6447.

news flash | Understanding and choosing a Medicare Approved Drug Discount Card may be a confusing task if you do not already have prescription coverage in your medical plan. Medicare has prepared helpful information, tools and comparisons. You may obtain them by going to www.medicare.gov and choosing from a variety of articles. Drug discount cards became available in May, 2004 and will remain effective for retirees who do not have other prescription coverage until January 1, 2006 when the Medicare, Part D prescription drug option takes it's place. Enrollment in Medicare Part D is voluntary and will begin November 15, 2005. There will be a cost to the individual for this coverage and you must be enrolled in Medicare Parts A and B to be eligible to enroll.

A new book by John Abramson, M.D. investigates overuse of prescription drugs. It is called “Overdo$ed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine", and you can check it out at www.overdosedamerica.com. The evidence about the role of lifestyle changes in health has been buried beneath the mountain of propaganda urging us to take more and more pills, even when the scientific evidence shows lifestyle change is more effective than pills. Doctors and regular folks have been brainwashed by this commercialism. The doctors are wooed by drug reps with expensive dinners at fine restaurants to pitch their drugs and offer drug rebates. For the past eight years the public has been subject to the same pressures through the ads on television telling us of some new disease we did not even know we had, but for which we must immediately “ask our doctor” for the latest medicine to fix it.