IBM Medicare Aetna PPO & HMO participants don't use Extend Health

I just helped someone this morning who used an IBM Aetna PPO plan in 2013.  She will be able to use that Aetna PPO plan for 2 more years.  The same deal applies for people who used the Aetna HMO plan.  She doesn't use Extend Health to enroll and there is no dealing with Extend Health for any reimbursements.  She uses the IBM Service Center to enroll.  Because she is still on a corporate group plan she also will be able to keep her Met Life Dental plan and her Anthem Vision plan.  
    
These Aetna plans were corporate group plans created for a consortium of companies know as Retiree Health Access.  I will guess that there were a lot of IBM retirees enrolled in these plans and it would have dramatically affected the price structure of the plans for them to abruptly drop out.  What a pity that people who were on Aetna Integration plans which were also offered out of RHA weren't given the same option. 
  
What a shame that IBM is phasing out of Aetna RHA.  That is a real corporate health exchange that put us in a big insurance pool because it was funded and used by many companies.  It gave us excellent choices and my bet is the cost of our insurance would not have dramatically risen because of the size of the insurance pool.  Of course, it meant that IBM would have to spend all the subsidy money instead of betting we will be bumbling idiots and forget to do the paperwork to suck all the money out of our HRA accounts.  Shame on IBM for being so ruthless.  Shame, shame, shame.