NYT: "SINCE 1983, the city of Duluth, Minn., has been promising free lifetime health care to all of its retired workers, their spouses and their children up to age 26. No one really knew how much it would cost...The total came to about $178 million, or more than double the city's operating budget. And the bill was growing." I've read other stories like this (San Diego is a big city in big trouble, for one). This is just insane. What decision-maker in their right mind would offer this kind of benefit. Especially starting it just around the time it was become very clear that long-term health-care benefits were unsustainable. I mean, this is not a surprise. I graduated from college and started working in 1987, just when HMOs were coming in, and at that time, much of the general public was well-aware that health-care inflation was a big and growing problem.
Unsurprisingly, later on in the article, a person who I believe is some form of lobbyist for public employee unions, tries to put forth this very hypothesis: "Fifteen years ago, who would have projected 10 years of double-digit increases in health care costs?" Sorry, no sale, that was exactly what appeared to be in store before HMOs were put into place, and then HMOs failed almost completely, so nothing changed. Except we had the booming 90s, so for a while, nobody cared too much and, in order to compete in the labor market, companies backed off from the strategy of deliberately ensuring that employees were exposed to the rate of increase in their health-care benefits.
7:35:51 AM 
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