HotAir has;
Oh Good: Broke Cities Looking To Unload Expensive Retirees On ObamaCare
POSTED AT 6:31 PM ON JULY 7, 2013 BY ERIKA JOHNSEN
The Obama administration’s short-term
panicked desperation to avoid ObamaCare-related consequences in the
2014 midterms is only matched by their relatively longer-term
panicked desperation to convince young and healthy Americans to get
with the program en masse. They’re going to need a heck of a lot of people with
relatively inexpensive health-insurance needs to participate in
and subsequently subsidize the inherently riskier and more expensive
insurance pools the program creates by deliberate design — a redistributive
fact of which the law’s supporters and administrators are all too aware.
But, heck, as long as ObamaCare is
offering what we’re promised will be this miraculously subsidized (affordable?)
health care system, why shouldn’t municipalities with insolvent pension and
benefit programs take this wondrous opportunity to siphon off some of their
incurred costs and just ease them onto the national system? Problem, solved — amirite? Via Bloomberg:
Detroit is facing bankruptcy, and
Chicago wants to cut retiree benefit costs. Both are turning to President
Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul in what could become a road map for
cash-strapped cities. …
“That will become an option that I
think a lot of employers and a lot of cities would look at,” said Ario, now a
managing director of Manatt Health Solutions, a Washington consulting firm that
advises insurers. …
In Detroit, reducing benefits for
30,000 employees and retirees is part of Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr’s plan to
avoid the largest U.S. municipal bankruptcy by erasing a $386 million deficit
and attacking a long-term debt of at least $17 billion.
The city had 19,389 retirees
eligible for health, life-insurance and death benefits as of June 30, 2011,
according to Orr’s plan. The insurance benefits cost the city $177.4 million in
fiscal 2012. Retirees contributed an additional $23.5 million.
Orr wants to give current and
former workers health-reimbursement accounts. The city would pay from $100 to
$250 a month to help with medical costs or premiums under the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act, according to a proposal to city unions.
That would cost the city as little
as $27.5 million annually, according to Orr’s plan.
If more indebted cities (states?!) cotton on to the potential
for savings by ending their plans with currently insured older Americans and
transferring them to the exchanges, then who knows what this will look like,
but I would suggest that ObamaCare and the prices for the younger subsidizers
are going to get still more expensive than anyone predicted. …Ah, well. After
all, who could’ve seen this coming, really?
Thank You Hot Air and Ms Johnson.
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