juan and i will talk to you about the united healthcare medicare advantage ppo for the medicare population. i will talk commentary about the medicare advantage rates. juan will explain the design and program changes that we are recommending for action. and then i will talk about how that plays into the rate cards for twientd -- 2019. so, overall there's -- as you can see on the introduction page, page four, there's over 15,000 covered medicare eligible retirees with departments in the uhc medicare advantage ppo plan. substantial population within the family. the 2019 rate quotation on a status quo basis no changes is changing over 22%. i will explain the tugs and pulls. that is a favorable outcome. but we also have the opportunity to add programs that we think will freely benefit members and keep the premium below where it is today. as you see on slide five, we're going to talk about two options. a status quo renewal and then a package of recommended plan design and program changes for the 2019 plan year that if you look at the bottom of the page, where you see 2019 with all proposed chang

united healthcare had not yet taken on the formally blue sealed retirees, that first -- that experience first started under united healthcare in 2017. so the underwriting is as best as possible. primarily based on information it's the ppo and the plan. so there is an element of better knowledge that united healthcare has now as they sit at this time, june 2018, forecasting the 2019 that didn't exist at the time their 2018 rates occurred, so for me i view it as an adjustment due to better knowledge, not necessarily a e precursor of continuation. >> all right. we will put a peg in that for may until we come to this time next year. any questions by any of the other commissioners? >> when we -- when all the care retirees went over to this plan, wasn't there some kind of a guaranteed rate? some kind of guarantee. >> i don't recall that. >> so there was a rate cap for 2018. so they came over in 2016 and then you had a rate cap for this year. that ended for 2018. 12/31/18 basically. >> the second thing about the nutrition counselor, you said enhanced. what was it before? it was enhanced to? >> so in the past any nutrition counseling has been tied to a disease. what we are proposing is to provide a benefit of nutrition counsel