If public sector employees are exempt out of Medicare, I have no problem with providing retiree medical benefits at a reasonable definition of retirement. However, it is insane to throw in a freebie of health care from termination date to normal retirement. We’re talking tens of thousands of dollars annually for a benefit that assuming they’re working is being provided by their current employer in most cases.

However, the definition of “retire” seems to be abused in the public sector to the point that the IRS has actually taken a stand as to legitimate definitions (age 62). I have a real problem with public sector employees getting free or greatly subsidized health care at age 42. As an actuary, the numbers don’t work. Just start looking at the GASB 45 reports now being prepared (government entities are now actually having to quantify what their future promised liabilities are with respect to future health expenditures, rather than recognizing on a “pay as you go” basis). The numbers are staggering.

I should have made it more clear.

The public sector is still pretty highly unionized, in stark contrast to the fading of union influence in the private sector. So in the past 30 years in the private sector, we’ve seen vast increases in productivity, incredible income growth in corporate high eschelons, and little or no increase in real wages for the great majority of working Americans.

Maybe stronger private sector unions would give private sector workers more parity.

So they’re paying ten or fifteen bucks as opposed to the five? Sounds like quite the hardship.

“they have no access to indemnity plans”

Hilarious. Who does?

“and have much higher threshholds for receiving retirement benefits.”

Twenty years as opposed to ten? Another hardship.

“But Murphy’s piece should not be taken as proof that all public employees are “pigs at the trough” as you seem to suggest in an earlier post.”

I more than suggested it, but will concede that not all of them are. But the day that the largest employer in the State of Massachusetts is not the State of Massachusetts is the day your arguments may fall on less deaf ears.

That the legislature has no qualms ignoring successful initiative petitions, which constitutionally, are supposed to become law within thirty days, yet does not have the courage to stand up to municipal unions, reveals who is really in charge of the state.

This same legislature, I would add, had no qualms making everyone else in the state pay for their own health care.

State employees not only pay higher copays than most city/town employees, they have no access to indemnity plans and have much higher threshholds for receiving retirement benefits. State employees have higher usage rates of less expensive managed care plans.

The Globe piece has a lot of merit as an indictment of local politics…The GIC is a much better deal for the taxpayer and cities and towns should be able to transfer their employees to it in order to save dollars at the local level.

But Murphy’s piece should not be taken as proof that all public employees are “pigs at the trough” as you seem to suggest in an earlier post.

The Boston Herald should be lauded for getting the payroll and pension records for various state and municipal government employees (see “Your Tax Dollars At Work” on their homepage) onto the web in electronic, searchable format. The Herald is best positioned to extend their existing database to include health care expenses for retired employees.

The more difficult reporting problem, however, is tying together who on that list is getting reasonable benefits and who is not. Those are case-by-case determinations that probably require access to an extensive database (probably being held by the pension board) listing each person’s years worked, work hours each year, salary each year, and other pension qualifying payments (like the UMass president’s housing allowance… gag, gag).

That’s hard work. You have to separate out the part-time library board member for 10 years from the career-long civil servant that worked his butt off for mediocre salary for 40 years.

What is really the problem is that retired public employees are getting generous retirement health benefits when virtually everybody else gets pushed into Medicare. You don’t need to do database searches — or call out former, part-time library board members with generous retirement benefits — to realize that is a benefit that doesn’t make sense.

And having the employer pay 90% of health care costs? Similarly out-of-line with other sectors of the economy — and in need of a state law to make it a more reasonable 50/50 split (assuming that the state legislature had the balls to pass such a law).