KEY VOTE: HB 540 - Guaranteed Health Care for Not You
Today in the General Assembly a bill will be taken up that creates a new guaranteed health benefit for all future retirees from the state.
This is a guarantee not typically available anywhere else in the workplace.
While the bill makes some paltry commitment to increasing the amount of funding for the program from participants, the real cost recovery is borne by requiring Kentucky taxpayers to support its funding solvency.
There are good ideas in the bill. It attempts to prevent the legislature from borrowing from the fund, and it requires more reasonable contributions from participants. But the cost of a permanent guaranteed cadillac heath benefit is too great.
Health costs are rising, and likely to rise much faster if Nancy Pelosi is successful in cramming health entitlement expansion through Congress. The current $6.2 billion unfunded liability will expand and taxpayers will be on the hook to pay for benefits they themselves don't have, and (as Caleb Brown points out) that go to people who are no longer contributing to the state.
Call and email your representative today to prevent tax hikes in the future!
This is likely to be scored as a Key Vote on the KyCFG's 2010 scorecard.
