Detroit Retirees Suffer Again : ObamaCare Fails to Insure

Goodness - retirees in Detroit are headed for more trouble with the Affordable Care Act tanking, as if bankruptcy wasn't enough taking away a lot of their pensions, now they are facing a loss of health insurance as well.

Welcome to the real world of progressive Democrat control. It took decades of fraud, waste and outright theft on the part of the city council and the unions to make this happen, but they have succeeded in destroying a once great city. Little wonder then why nearly every other large city, and entire states, that is controlled by Democrats are failing, and that many are ready for bankruptcy as well.

The question that remains, and  is so puzzling, why do the people continue to vote for more of the same, and then wonder how and why it came crashing down?

Double Trouble for Detroit Retirees
Source: Shikha Dalmia, "ObamaCare Is Double Trouble for Detroit Retirees," Bloomberg, October 16, 2013.
October 24, 2013

The whole point of ObamaCare was to make it easier for vulnerable Americans to obtain health coverage. But unless the federal insurance exchanges are fixed soon, the law might wallop some people at their most vulnerable moment: Detroit's retirees, says Shikha Dalmia, senior analyst at the Reason Foundation.

• Detroit's emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, has announced that to return the city to solvency, effective Jan. 1, he will stop providing coverage to 8,000 retirees under age 65.
• Instead, they will receive a $125 monthly stipend to use toward private plans from the exchange. (Spouses and dependents don't get anything.)
• The hope was that the Affordable Care Act's subsidies would kick in for unmarried retirees making from $11,490 to $45,960 and married retirees making from $15,000 and $62,040 annually, the cutoffs for eligibility.

The hitch is that the Michigan exchange, like many of the 35 others run by the federal government after the states refused to build their own, has been beset by glitches.

• Even if consumers manage to enroll, however, it's unclear they will actually get coverage given that the exchange reportedly isn't providing accurate enrollment information to underwriters.
• Should that happen, Detroit retirees who have been kicked off the city's coverage would have no option.
• They would have to join the ranks of the state's 1.3 million uninsured.

Yes, it may be hard to feel sorry for Detroit's retirees given all the special benefits that they've received over the years, including an extra paycheck every year as a Christmas bonus and death benefits to ineligible families of workers. This largesse depleted the city's pension funds and forced it into bankruptcy.

But union leaders misled rank-and-file retirees, pretending that they could rob their own future without suffering the consequences. Now the same retirees might find that ObamaCare has misled them, too.