SAG-AFTRA Health Plan Settles Lawsuit Led by Ed Asner
thewrap.comclass action lawsuit filed in December 2020 by 10 members of the actors guild, including the late former SAG president Ed Asner, who died in 2021.As part of the agreement, SAG-AFTRA will pay $15 million to older members of SAG-AFTRA who lost their coverage in the guild’s health plan due to changes made in 2020 that raised the amount of annual earnings required to qualify for the plan and removing members’ ability to count residuals towards that earnings threshold.
The trustees of the health plan at the time said that such changes were necessary to keep the health plan solvent, as the plan’s funds were falling during the COVID-19 pandemic and were projected to run out by 2024.
A Medicare Advantage marketplace through healthcare vendor Via Benefits was set up to allow those who no longer qualified to seek alternative coverage.
But the plaintiffs in the class action suit argued that the changes violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) as members were not informed of the financial problems the health plan faced during SAG-AFTRA’s mutual bargaining agreement negotiations in 2020 and that the changes also were a form of age discrimination as they affected senior members of the guild who had already received their pensions.
Read more on thewrap.com