How Taxpayers Will Bail Out Detroit

[Geee]

Front Page Magazine:

On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew ostensibly ruled out a federal government bailout of Detroit following its recent declaration of bankruptcy. “You know George, Detroit’s economic problems have been a long time in developing…I think when it comes to the questions between Detroit and its creditors, that’s what Detroit is going to have to work out with the creditors,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. Not quite. Detroit is proposing an effort to offload much of its bloated healthcare costs onto the American taxpayer, using ObamaCare as the vehicle for doing so.

 

“The Affordable Care Act does change the possibilities here dramatically,” said Neil Bomberg, a program director at the National League of Cities. “It offers a very high-quality, potentially very affordable way to get people into health care without the burden falling back onto the city and town.” In reality, the proposal would do nothing more than shift the so-called “burden” of fiscal irresponsibility produced by decades of “city and town” politicians colluding with labor unions onto other cities and towns that had nothing to do with that irresponsibility. As for “affordability,” such a statement is equally nonsensical. More affordability for Detroit, and other progressive sinkholes, equals less affordability for those expected to make up the difference.

 

 

Furthermore, Detroit is hardly an isolated case. A study conducted by the Pew Charitable Trusts revealed that “61 key cities across America … emerged with a gap of more than $217 billion between what they had promised their workers in pensions and retiree health care and what they had saved to pay that bill.”

[Draggingtree]

Detroit Planning to Fight Bankruptcy by Dumping City Employees into Obamacare

July 30, 2013 By Daniel Greenfield

 

Obamacare and Detroit. Two horrible disasters who came together at last.

 

When America goes bankrupt, where will we dump our Federal employees? UNCare? GloboMed? But you can see some of the forward-thinking that got Detroit where it is today.

 

And unions have one more reason to feel good about supporting Obamacare, which will now become an excuse for dumping public employees.

 

As Detroit enters the federal bankruptcy process, the city is proposing a controversial plan for paring some of the $5.7 billion it owes in retiree health costs: pushing many of those too young to qualify for Medicare out of city-run coverage and into the new insurance markets that will soon be operating under the Obama health care law.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/detroit-planning-to-fight-bankruptcy-by-dumping-city-employees-into-obamacare/