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Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Ind. Gov't. - More on looming public-sector retiree heath care crisis
The NY Times today has a long story about the how governmental units nationwide are facing challenges in paying health care costs for government retirees. This is the fifth in a series "examining the actions of state and local governments that have left taxpayers with large unpaid bills for public employee pensions.."
Indiana is not among those mentioned. However, the story points up the impact of the new accounting rule (requiring "government entities -- from cities to universities to school districts -- to calculate and report how much they owe for health care costs and other post-employment benefits for their present and future retirees' according to this article).
From today's NY Times story:
The troubles foreshadow broader government problems — not just in those that combined their pension and retiree medical accounts — as states and localities that never estimated the cost of their retirees’ health care move to do so now.Donald Rueckert Jr., senior vice president and an actuary with Aon Consulting who has been helping state and local governments with these calculations, said that when all the numbers are done, under a new accounting rule, the governments’ total retiree health bill will probably turn out to be about $1.1 trillion. * * *
Now that the new accounting rule has forced New York, along with other state and local governments, to look ahead, the city has just published the total estimated future cost of its retirees’ health care: $53.5 billion in today’s dollars.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 19, 2006 08:40 AM
Posted to Indiana Government