The Next Retirement Time Bomb

[NVMojo]

SINCE 1983, the city of Duluth, Minn., has been promising free lifetime health care to all of its retired workers, their spouses and their children up to age 26. No one really knew how much it would cost. Three years ago, the city decided to find out.

Mayor Herb Bergson said that Duluth, Minn., "isn't going to function" if it has to keep its promise of providing lifetime health care to its retirees.

It took an actuary about three months to identify all the past and current city workers who qualified for the benefits. She tallied their data by age, sex, previous insurance claims and other factors. Then she estimated how much it would cost to provide free lifetime care to such a group.

The total came to about $178 million, or more than double the city's operating budget. And the bill was growing.

"Then we knew we were looking down the barrel of a pretty high-caliber weapon," said Gary Meier, Duluth's human resources manager, who attended the meeting where the actuary presented her findings.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/business/yourmoney/11retire.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all

[xchrom]

1. grrrr -- how can you not prepare

for this eventuality?

it's very hard -- if not impossible for many people to be able to save for retirement anymore because of the expense of -- well -- everything.

so for organizations, cities, corporations, etc not to prepare for these eventualities is reprehensible.

[Nay]

2. "Grrrr" is right. How can they not have prepared? Did they not know,

or want to pay for, an actuary to figure out how much $$ they needed to stash and how to invest it for the future? Or did they just bullshit their employees so they would stay on with the govt, thinking they would have health insurance? Heads should roll.

[acmejack]

3. This is why we need to get rid of Social Security!

Think of it, starving retirees everywhere. That will show those nasty boomers. Thank Gawd for the GOP...

[bemildred]

4. Let's start by firing these incompetents to save money. nt