Most future state and municipal retirees would have to pay about $1,000 a year more for health care under an ambitious proposal that Governor Deval Patrick plans to unveil Friday in an effort to save up to $20 billion in health care costs over the next three decades.
Under the plan, most public employees would have to work until age 60, not 55, before they become eligible for health care benefits and would have to accrue 20 years of state or local service, up from the current 10.
Comments
Under the changes taking place in pensions and medical cover, it appears to me that it was great disservice to state employees that they were kept out of the Social Security program. The state reckoned it could save money by offering retirees medical coverage and full pensions, rather than having to pay the employer portion of the payroll taxes.
Well, the state mismanaged the system all these year and now it's refusing to fulfill its responsibilities. Retired state employees will be suffering the consequences.
This is yet one more step in our race to the bottom. The pensioners with the lowest incomes will pay the most. Thank you, Democrats.
To change the vesting and premium formula mid-term for current employees with 10 to 15 years already in, with 5 to 10 more years to go, who have already started preliminary retirement financial planning, just seems completely wrong. I certainly hope I am misreading this.
As a municipal retiree with more than 35 years of service and a taxpayer I have agree that there needs to be some reform. I find it hard to justify employees getting hired in their 40's working ten or fifteen years getting full health care for the rest of their life. Medical coverage should have some relation to the percentage of pension you are eligible for. Full pension, full medical (not 100%, just levels as covered while employed), 20% pension, 20% of covered medical. This should be for all employees including state Reps and Senators & judges.
Medical care is not the same as a pension. Are you saying if someone can't raise 80% of the cost of a cataract operation then they should just go blind? That's what it sounds like. But it won't affect you, of course, and you don't care much about the rest apparently.
Everyone on Medicare has the same coverage -- full coverage for the rest of their lives. If state employees had Medicare the state could provide full coverage with relatively inexpensive MediGap coverage. That's the way many companies do it in the private sector.
Government workers should not get retirement benefits at 55. I know several able bodied people who "retired" at 55 on state or Fedeal pensions. I see no reason that these peple don't have to work until at least 62 (the SS minimum age) or 65. At 62 they should get reduced benefits.
Private businesses went throught the process of reducing pensions and medical benefits for retirees years ago. It is a painful process, but a necessary one. People who work at a government job for 20 years and retire at 55 may live 30 or even 40 years on a penstion these days. The government simply cannot afford that type of system anymore. The change is painful, but necessary.
I agree. It should be the same as Social Security, and the Federal Medicare age should also be the same as Social Security.
Hasn’t our government learned that the more you regulate, the higher are the prices and the greater the (unforeseen) problems.
Tell me how government regulation has anything to do with medical coverage for state employees. I'd like to read you brilliant analysis.
Geoff Beckwith is a great example of what is wrong with politics today. He gets considerable concessions from labor, and he wants more. The strength of our system is in compromise, not all or nothing. We will never move forward if we can't remembre give and take.
Please tell me this applies to legislators and other political hires and judges. Somehow I doubt it. And I don't care to hear how they should not serve forever. If the don't serve the minimum like everyone else, they should get their insurance in the marketplace like everyone else.
We need to do what Michigan did to bring outrageous costs under control.
Eventually all pay the piper with the Democrats love to spend what they dont have continually. If we had 50% less politicans we would have 50% less costs for promises for funding this or that which reassures votes and a long political career.Would we have a balanced budget ever with the current practices?
Don't be an idiot. The state pension system has existed through administrations run by both parties, including those days when Republicans were in charge. Hang up your partisanship once in a while. People like you are the problem.
It is unfortunate the the public misunderstands the pension and health care insurance being provided to its workforce, which only causes many of them to vent about how some people seem to have it made.
Massachusetts, like some other states, offers its employees a public pension rather than do what the private sector does, which is to match its employee's FICA contributions for their eventual Social Security payments. Instead, state employees contribute to their own pension, which the state is supposed to match. Unlike private employers who would face severe civil and criminal penalties if they failed to match their employee's contributions to Social Security, Massachusetts for many years has been putting off its contributions until they now amount to the billions of dollars. Now, some legislators (and many members of the public) grouse that we can't afford these payments. It would be like a private employer not paying their matching Social Security taxes and spending the money elsewhere complaining that they shouldn't have to pay now that they can't afford it.
As for retiring at age 50, while it is true that state employees used to be able to retire at age 50 with only 20 years of service or to retire at age 55 with only ten years of service, it was never with a full pension. Someone with ten years of service retiring at the age of 55 with ten years of service could enjoy a pension of 15%. Not exactly a pension to live on for the rest of their lives. Likewise, someone retiring at the age of 50 with 20 years of service could enjoy a pension of 20%. Again, not what the public thinks of as a hack living off the public for the rest of their lives. These pensions were intended for those who were leaving state service to return to the private sector and who not contributing to Social Security for those years of state service or those who were entering state service after years in the private sector and would no longer be contributing to their Social Security, both examples resulting in lowered Social Security when they eventually retired.
And for state workers with both private employment and state employment when they retired, their Social Security retirement benefits are slashed when they retire. Despite earning Social Security benefits, they are reduced because of their state pension, despite having paid into the federal system.
Before I forget it, state employees hired after July 1, 1996, must pay nine percent of their salary, almost 50% more than workers in the private sector pay for Social Security.
So while I do not expect to be living in poverty when I eventually retire (no sooner than my 66th birthday), neither will I be living high off the hog at the taxpayer's expense. Instead, I will receive a pension from a pension system into which I, as an employee, and you and I, as taxpayers, have contributed that is in lieu of the federal system of Social Security.
I won't begrudge what you have earned after a lifetime of paying into Social Security. Please don't begrudge what I have earned after a lifetime of paying into the state pension system.
This is the most accurate explanation I have seen in the Globe, either by staff or commenters, in years. I am a 60 year old municipal employee with 15 years in, simply hoping that my minimal pension will cover my health insurance in my retirement. This proposed legislation is of great concern to me and many of my co-workers. Thank you, DCF-BAO, for the clarity!
Well Patrick have to find savings for all those on welfare, housing subsidies, social security disability, EBT, WIC who drives Land Rovers and Escalades
The change in the years of service provision represents a blatant attempt to discriminate against older (over 50) applicants as new hires by making state employment a much less attractive option for them, since they would not be able to attain 20 years service without working into their seventies. I have no problem with changing the minimum age from 55 to 60, but changing the time of service provision for retiree health insurance so radically is a cruel blow to older state workers on the job less than 10 years who may be too old to be able to work full time 10 years longer than had planned. What about current retirees? Why is it fair that that they not bear at least a small portion of this burden? I understand that changes need to be made in the name of fiscal responsibility. But this proposal disadvantages many older workers, and older job applicants, in a way that reeks of age discrimination. As usual, the early baby boomers ( those born between 1946 - 1955) wind up consuming much of the available pie, then once they have done so, a crisis is declared, and those of us who came after are expected to bear the burden and pay the freight for the largesse. I'm not saying it's their " fault" but from the viewpoint of people in their early/ mid 50's, we've seen this movie over and over again. It's inequitable, and I believe, discriminatory. Instead of increasing the years of service provision, what about imposing a more equitable increase on ALL (current and future) retirees, with all retirees who retired with less than 20 but more than 10 years paying a higher amount. After all, the problem is systemic, so why shouldn't everyone who benefits from the system be expected to pay their fair share? Flat out excluding older workers with, say, 18 years of service who work until their late 60's, by increasing the years of service provision from 10 to 20 is not an equitable solution. Everyone benefitting from the system, now and in the future, should be expected to pay their fair share to avoid future deficits.