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CAPITOL
Local governments fight retirees’ health benefit bill
BY MICHAEL GORMLEY The Associated Press

    Local governments say a proposal to study health benefits for retirees is really a “Trojan horse” that will protect forever free or nearly free lifetime health insurance for retired government workers.
    The bill would for at least a year bar local governments and the state from finding cheaper ways to provide health insurance for their retirees until a task force reports its findings.
    New York State Association of Counties Executive Director Stephen Acquario said Friday that the bill would prohibit governments from making cuts in local and state public spending, which has led to some of the highest taxes in the nation.
    The bill (A-9393-A) could be acted on as early as next week and has strong majority sponsors in the Senate and Assembly. It was revised in the Assembly’s government employees committee where any action to reduce the health benefit for retirees would be suspended until a task force reports its recommendations. The 12-member task force includes state government officials including at least three recommended by the AFL-CIO, but none from local governments, according to the bill.
    “You’re talking about retiree health care here,” said AFL-CIO President Denis Hughes, who supports the measure. “We owe it to them that they don’t spend the end of their lives in misery.”
    The concern comes as Gov. David Paterson pushes to reduce local government spending and to cut taxes that he said are driving young New Yorkers to other states for jobs and lower costs of living.
    “I think it’s everybody’s concern that in this panic — in this weakened economy — to deal with the cost of government that we do it well and do it right and we don’t scapegoat the most vulnerable people, your retirees,” Hughes said. “That’s my only interest.”
    He said he sees no problem excluding local government officials from the expert panel because labor leaders weren’t included in panels created to cut local government spending.
    “It’s a classic legislative Trojan horse concealing a financial time bomb for taxpayers,” said E.J. Mc-Mahon of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, part of the fiscally conservative Manhattan Institute. “How about protecting taxpayers? We need a detailed and objective study of options — not a stacked task force that will deliver a foregone conclusion.”
    Governors George Pataki and Eliot Spitzer vetoed similar measures five times saying it would limit efforts to reduce costs. There was no immediate comment from Paterson Friday.

Government employees should have permanent free health-care only if all the taxpayers paying for it get free health-care too but paying for it could be a real problem.

what the @#$$##@%^%&#&@$%----what are we doing???? if it looks too good to be true---DUH---IT IS.........

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“You’re talking about retiree health care here,” said AFL-CIO President Denis Hughes, who supports the measure. “We owe it to them that they don’t spend the end of their lives in misery.”

NO ONE IS OWED ANYTHING----WE ALL AGE AND DIE WITH COMPLICATION OR NOT---SOME OF US EVEN LOOSE LIMBS, EYE SIGHT, HEARING ETC THROUGHOUT OUR LIVES.....SOME OF US HAVE OUR HOUSES BURNED DOWN, LOOSE CHILDREN GET CANCER ETC ETC........

THIS GUY IS VERY VERY SHORTSIGHTED......society doesn't really like to look at, talk to or deal with OLD......

when the Bible talks about the "old man" it is the wisdom of our past generations that is lost and we let it run forward on Hollywood, sports,mtv etc and the whims of the ignorant.......

maybe if we looked 'behind' once in a while, this discussion about aged healthcare will be truthful and just-----not just a stumping for the elected.....

as for retirement--never saw that anywhere in the Bible or in our constitution like it is some kind of right of passage-----or New Deal?????