10 Billion to subsidize UAW health benefits
Aug 29th, 2009 by David Anderson
One reason the public so distrusts the health care plan being considered by Congress is that so many troublesome details keep bubbling out of the massive legislation.
The latest example is the $10 billion taxpayers will be asked to shell out to prop up the United Auto Workers’ retiree health insurance program.
The helping hand is a recognition by Congress that the union’s volunteer employee benefit association, or VEBA, can’t possibly stay solvent if it is asked to cover all of the union workers taking early buyouts from the Detroit automakers.
So the union’s supporters added language to the House’s gargantuan health care bill that requires the federal government to pick up most of the cost of catastrophic claims for union retirees age 55 to 64.
The biggest beneficiary would be the UAW, which got $60 billion from the Big Three in exchange for taking on the obligation for retiree health care.
But the bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler forced the UAW and President Ron Gettelfinger to swap $24 billion of the VEBA payments for stock of uncertain value, and now a fund that was supposed to last for 80 years is projected to be depleted in 12 years.
The more you look at the health bills; the more you find.
And to think that politicians used to buy votes with cheap rum.
Back then they actually used private money, then they “cleaned” things up and now they use our money.