Kodak Retirees March on Company Headquarters ROCHESTER, NY (WXXI) - More than a hundred Kodak retirees and their families marched around the Kodak Office tower in downtown Rochester Wednesday afternoon, protesting cutbacks in their health care.

Kodak mailed out 16-page newsletters to its U.S. retirees this week, detailing cuts it first announced a month ago. Retirees will lose their dental coverage, and coverage for their dependents will be phased out over the next ten years. Retirees will pick up a bigger share of their health care over that same ten year period.

Rick Diehl of Greece left Kodak in 2003 after 36 years. He says he understands the company faces tough challenges staying competitive, but the changes to his family's health care may force him to go back to work at age 60.

Diehl says he had open heart surgery a few years ago and can't afford to be without health insurance.

Mary Billitier of Greece is the wife of a Kodak retiree who will see her health care coverage phased out over the next 10 years. She says her husband probably wouldn't have retired when he did if the couple had known these changes were coming.

Kodak estimates that two-person coverage next year will go up by a hundred dollars a month -- and 500 dollars a month for the top-option plan. Even so, Kodak says it will still be covering 66 percent of retirees' health premiums next year. They've also added a new, cheaper plan although it comes with a 23-hundred dollar deductible.

The retirees say that chips away at their middle class lifestyle, and they suggest Kodak executives get by with less if the company needs to be more profitable.
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