Retirement Health Care Costs Faces Cuts from States, Cities

nytimes.com:

Governors and mayors facing large deficits have set their sights on a relatively new target -- the soaring expense of health benefits for millions of retired state and local workers.

Read the whole story: nytimes.com

Comments

[Bat Wrangler]

09:03 PM on 02/15/2011

Could such austerity extend to federal/military retiree benefits?

[Carl Caroli]

04:33 PM on 02/15/2011

Cap all pensions to top out at $75k/yr. They don't need more than that. Stop effectively immediately, if we haven't already, letting O.T. boost pensions calculations. Base salary only. Benefits should be comparable to industry, period.

[dadw5boys]

10:59 AM on 02/15/2011

Americans are such fools.

Insurance Companies protect the Corporations who make most of the things that make them sick.

And the same Insurance Companies want to CONTROL Medical Care so there is no way there will be a tie in of illness to Corporate activity !!!

So Insurance Companies profit on both ends.

[lovbug]

04:46 AM on 02/15/2011

These elderly people keep watching Fox news and voting for Republicans. Too bad no one is telling them that they're voting against their own interest. It's sad.

[kamact]

12:13 AM on 02/15/2011

Another impact from Wall Street financial terrorists

[Timma]

11:21 PM on 02/14/2011

Death Panels ala Repub...

[arlandbaee]

10:19 PM on 02/14/2011

The public sector has very few perks to lure talented employees. The only real major benefits for working in the public sector are the retirement benefits. It's certainly not the salary.

Every Republican knows this is a problem. They even say that it's difficult to find high talent to work for the government because of the disproportionate salary compensation.

Now they want to take away the benefits that many people have sacrificed years of decreased salaries to obtain? It's just shameful.

[econ1]

08:59 PM on 02/14/2011

It is probably difficult to cut the benefits for retired workers. It might be easier to institute a tax on benefits above a certain level.

[notdarkyet]

07:58 PM on 02/14/2011

I find it ironic that now that the baby boomers are hitting retirement age all of a sudden pensions and retirement and SS and medicare are under attack. This generation paid in more money into the system than any generation in history. Trillions. We paid for almost every penny the older generation took because they didn't. I watched my parents and every one of their generation retire early with huge retirements, pensions and great HC benefits. Oh yeah, they are the greatest generation. Right.

[schatsie]

09:30 PM on 02/14/2011

Exactly and the only reason they had those benefits WAS THE UNIONS.....anyone who spits on unions is spitting on their own parents....

[mountainweb]

05:05 PM on 02/15/2011

You are truly delusional if you think the unions controlled by the mafia crated the benefits....

[McKeaton]

10:30 PM on 02/14/2011

The "boomers" had no competition when they rebuilt the entire world destroyed by the second WWWar.Everything they built was good, no quality chalanges, no environmental consequences questioned, no vision for the future...everything seemed to entitle them for whatever they were asking for...and the majority wre voting conservative...THET HAD enough to sustain THEIR greedy life style...
1989, the fall of Iron Curtain, the rise of China, who for thousands of years chose isolation, changed the dynamics of the american hegemony ...it is going to last to the day that the dollar, printed by the PRIVATE Entreprise, the FED. RES. will be challenged and replaced by the chinese and other emerging markets currencies...All the speculative Casino, controlled , influenced and manipulated by several plutocrats of the world will end the fake economy we have today...IT is a TRAGEDY which started in 1983 when A . Greenpan became fed res chairman....
We NEED PUBLIC OPTION or a popular health care system, out of the for profit manipulation, speculative trading induced by the insurance industry....

[Frank Miller]

11:19 PM on 02/14/2011

I definitely agree the health care hogs are taking US to the cleaners. When I can buy perscriptions cheaper than the copay south of the boarder that is organized crime...

[Palito]

05:54 PM on 02/14/2011

Wow,

blaming public employees for the failed economic policies enacted by corporate interests that have caused the bankruptcy of cities and states? LOLLOL it is clear that decades of right wng indoctrination have worked perfectly to achieve their objectives.

[mountainweb]

05:06 PM on 02/15/2011

left wing indoctrination is closer to the truth.....

[smileylib]

03:15 PM on 02/14/2011

Nixon of MI comments that the idea isn't to go after the public employees. Well, what would he call it? We are currently being scapegoated for the state's ills. However, when you compare educational credentials, etc. to the public sector, we actually make less in salary & benefits. Talk about vitriol; you should read some of the comments and letters to the editors in our local papers; you would think teachers, police officers, sanitation workers, et al, are the total cause of our state being in the toilet (let's not pay attention to the bad management decisions made by both public sector employers & our esteemed legislature who hasn't been able to come up with a reasonable/effective way to run government in over a decade)!

[Donkan]

03:06 PM on 02/14/2011

If you read the article, some of the proposals being made are not that bad. You would need to look at it on a case-by-case basis. Obviously, we need to look after the elderly and others who are unable to support themselves 100%. But, there probably is a case to be made that some states and communities have been overly generous to public employees. Let's be fair and honest with ourselves.

[schatsie]

09:34 PM on 02/14/2011

Fair and Honest......Read FAIRSHARETAXES.org....There is a good reason that the SWISS and Germans tax wealth as well as income...

[Donkan]

10:00 PM on 02/14/2011

Thanks, it looks interesting. I still don't see, though, why some state employees should be able to retire in their 50s and pull down close to their full salary. Federal employees under the old retirement system pay 7% of their salary into retirement and max out at about 80% of their salary after 40 years of service. I'm not really familiar with the new system, but I understand it is less generous.

[cnick]

03:03 PM on 02/14/2011

I am 71 and pay medicare 248.00 per month for health care with deductibles and copays, my friend is also 71, she pays 58.00 per month with little or no copay or deductible. She is subsidized by our state (massachusetts). I worked and have a SS payment of 650.00, she worked for the state and has a pension of 85% of her pay. Where does this make sense, and where is the fairness. All of the citizens of our state are helping to pay her superior benefits with our taxes while we struggle with more expensive and less generous plans ourselves. This actually hurts the middle class and seniors who don't and didn't have state or municipal jobs.

[therightzwrong]

04:35 PM on 02/14/2011

Exactly cnick. The days of our state workers being carried financially from hire to death have to end. Provide them with fair salaries (match to public sector) and a fair match to their 401k's.

[arlandbaee]

10:26 PM on 02/14/2011

Tell me how many years each of you have contributed, the age at which each of you retired and started collecting benefits, her SS payment compared to yours and whether she sacrificed a lower salary over her lifetime for her current benefits.

then perhaps we can have a debate.

[therightzwrong]

04:04 PM on 02/15/2011

Not sure about cnicks situation but I know my Mom worked from 1966-2009. She worked a 40 hour a week job in restaurant management and gave many hours of overtime on her salaried position. My mom makes about 760.00 a month now on her social security. She has nothing else coming in as income. My Grandmother worked 30 years for the state (NY). She just passed away in Dec. at 91.5 years. She has collected on her state pension for 32 years (longer than she worked) which was about 1200.00 per month. She also collected social security about 900.00 a month and had free health care from the state. Had she not contracted a MRSA infection during a routine procedure she would have probably lived to be over 100 years like her Mother and Grandmother did. Thank you NY state tax payers for taking such good care of my grandmother who never saved a penny for her retirement. Thank you Mom for paying into it for your 40 years of working for basically just a paycheck.

[bachmantsk]

02:43 PM on 02/14/2011

They should be sued for breach of contract if they try it. Class action. If they want to make changes in benefits going forward, so be it. But a deal's a deal.