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.
The 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.
