Employer-sponsored postretirement health benefits: not your mother's medigap plan.

Using nationally representative data, we report the prevalence of retiree health insurance as a fringe benefit in private and public settings, and take an in-depth look at its content. We examine how it coordinates with Medicare to characterize the "total insurance" of beneficiaries who hold these supplements. Retiree health coverage is now widespread and typical benefits are far more generous than those found in medigap policies, the other major type of Medicare supplement. When a typical retiree plan is overlaid on Medicare, the resulting total insurance benefits are more generous than those held by either the working nonelderly or beneficiaries with a medigap supplement.