Saturday, November 23, 2013

Another "Unintended" Consequence of ObamaCare

Last night, we celebrated yet another retirement for a co-worker of mine.  That would make 5 in the last 15 days or so.  Are some of these people ready for retirement?  No, not really. Then, why retire?  They are retiring because Obamacare is forcing our near retirement employees to retire early.  This occurrence, while certainly not unheard of, is rippling across the country right now.  It is another consequence of this crap legislation taking away people's freedom.
I work for a rather large Corporation which will go unnamed and is irrelevant in this discussion.  After all, it is not the Corporation that is necessarily causing this consequence of early retirements.  Arguably, I would call it forced retirement.
obamacareThe Corporation was forced with a decision due to ObamaCare; either cut subsidies to existing employees or eliminate a generous Medical Premium Savings Account that was funded based upon our years of service to the company.  Rather than hurt their existing employees, they opted to eliminate our Medical Account.  The Medical Account served as a bridge to subsidize our health care costs from retirement until Medicare was available.
Long time employees had accrued as much as $28,000 in this Medical Premium Savings Account over their careers.  To reallocate the funds towards our health care premium subsidies, they eliminated the contribution and had to take back all funding that was not going to be used by retirees.  In order to do this, they gave employees the opportunity to retire prior to December 31, 2013 and keep their accounts or lose them all together.


ff_carson_032513This has caused a mass exodus from my workplace.  When I say there have been 5 retirements in the last 15 days, that is just my tiny department of 200 employees. My Corporation employs over 60,000 people!  Considering the size of the US workforce and amount of Baby Boomers in it, I can only imagine the amount of people this may be affecting.  There are certainly other ways and considerations regarding the true effect.  Forbes recently explored some of the other impacts associate with retirement and baby boomers.
How does this affect the bottom line of ObamaCare?  Again, it is HIGHLY doubtful that any thought or constructive research will be done in this area.  It is truly hard to measure the full impact of this legislation.  However, consider this; numerous employees are being forced into retirement, earlier than they had planned.  Their 401k's may not be to the level they had hoped, Social Security will be less than had they worked longer, and many will be forced onto Medicare.  All of these occurrences also add to the cost for those of us remaining in the workforce.  This will require more funding in the Federal programs to keep them afloat.
In the end, there is the human toll as well.  We are losing some of our most experienced workforce with a good work ethic.  Many of these people are very dedicated to their jobs and work unlike the younger generations of today.  We are losing our long time friends who lift us up on our bad days and keep life in perspective for us.
entitlements-historical-tax-levels-600So, what is there really to celebrate? People are being forced to do something they otherwise wouldn't have.  People lost another freedom to choose their own path.  And, finally the workforce is being weakened by reckless policy to serve a small minority of this country while destroying the rest of it.  All along, those on the left act as though they have done something great.  Of course, why would they really care about freedom of choice or people's livelihoods?  They got their wish; make even more people dependant upon a government that cannot afford to sustain our way of living.  Congratulations, you just made everyone's lives worse than they were.
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