Slashing health-care benefits is going to be a powerful trend. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:
Pension-fund managers from across the US stopped to take note of an unsettling development in their industry, and perhaps thought to themselves: ‘There but for the grace of God go I’.
For the first time in years, a major public pension system has slashed benefits for retirees: The Ohio Public Employees’ Retirement System voted last week to cut health care benefits provided to the pension’s current and future retirees beginning in 2022 to try and prevent the fund from plunging into insolvency in the not-too-distant future.
It’s just the latest reminder that America’s ‘pension timebomb’ isn’t as far off into the future as many retirees, investors and public officials would like to believe.
“There is no available funding for health care,” a report from the board said. “All of the employer contribution[s] must be allocated to pension funding until that funding improves. Based on current projections, no funding will be available for health care for 15 or more years.”
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 