ObamaCare comes to Chicago

by Diane Cohen According to reports by the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel will finally do what he and other politicians should have done a long time ago: end costly health insurance benefits paid to city retirees. Starting next year, the mayor will begin a three-year phase out of the coverage, at which time affected...

by Diane Cohen

According to reports by the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel will finally do what he and other politicians should have done a long time ago: end costly health insurance benefits paid to city retirees. Starting next year, the mayor will begin a three-year phase out of the coverage, at which time affected retired workers will have to pay for their own health insurance or seek ObamaCare subsidies from the ObamaCare exchange.

But why now? Simple: Because ObamaCare gives Emanuel an easy way to shift the city’s costs to federal taxpayers. While it may be tempting to call him opportunistic, we really can’t blame the mayor if he finally does the right thing, even if he’s only doing it now because he knows federal taxpayers will absorb the cost. This option, which was one of two strongly recommended in a Jan. 11, 2013, report by the city’s Retiree Healthcare Benefits Commission, will save the city more than $61 million in 2014 and result in a bulk of city retirees under age 65 being eligible for federal ObamaCare subsidies with which they can purchase insurance. This will, however, cost federal taxpayers anywhere from $8 million to more than $47 million annually.

We can’t blame the mayor if he does what should have been done a long time ago, with or without ObamaCare; that is, stop the payment of benefits the city cannot afford.

Instead, the blame rests squarely on ObamaCare itself, which will cost our nation more than $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years – more than double its projected cost – while it reduces accessibility to care through a system of price controls that drive out medical providers and make health care harder to come by. Add to that skyrocketing insurance premium costs, disincentives for employers to hire workers and the creation of a board of government bureaucrats that will make life and death decisions affecting America’s seniors, and we are in the midst of a recipe for disaster. The situation unfolding in Chicago – where young retirees may be turning to ObamaCare on the federal taxpayers’ dime – is just another bad consequence of a bad law.

Given that ObamaCare’s authors in Congress are afraid of sending their own employees to an ObamaCare exchange and looking for ways to get out of it, it is understandable that city retirees would be nervous.

As illustrated by the retiree benefit crisis facing the city of Chicago, all ObamaCare does is provide a means to shift costs from one set of taxpayers to another. Until we call out our elected officials for hiding behind the manipulative name of a law that promises protection and affordability, but in fact kills both, we will continue to suffer the consequences.