Taxpayers Shouldn't Pay for UAW's Rich Health Care Benefits

One reason the public so distrusts the health care plan being considered by Congress is that so many troublesome details keep bubbling out of the massive legislation.

The latest example is the $10 billion taxpayers will be asked to shell out to prop up the United Auto Workers' retiree health insurance program.

That provision is tucked deep into the bill passed by the House.

In effect, it would ask every taxpayer, regardless of whether they'll have health insurance coverage themselves after they retire — and most won't — to chip in to maintain the UAW's coverage, which even after the union's givebacks is still better than what the average American worker receives.

The helping hand is a recognition by Congress that the union's volunteer employee benefit association, or VEBA, can't possibly stay solvent if it is asked to cover all of the union workers taking early buyouts from the Detroit automakers.

So the union's supporters added language to the House's gargantuan health care bill that requires the federal government to pick up most of the cost of catastrophic claims for union retirees age 55 to 64.

The biggest beneficiary would be the UAW, which got $60 billion from the Big Three in exchange for taking on the obligation for retiree health care.

But the bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler forced the UAW and President Ron Gettelfinger to swap $24 billion of the VEBA payments for stock of uncertain value, and now a fund that was supposed to last for 80 years is projected to be depleted in 12 years.

Unless, of course, the union sharply trims retiree benefits.

That's a step it ought to take, but doesn't have to as long as it has friends in Congress.

But even the $10 billion giveaway in the health care bill won't be enough to keep the VEBA solvent. Benefit cuts are inevitable.

As Congress works to hammer out a health care reform bill that everyone can live with, payoffs like this one to a key Democratic constituency shouldn't survive.

Taxpayers should not be stuck paying for union benefits they didn't negotiate and, for the most part, don't enjoy themselves.

REPRINTED FROM THE DETROIT NEWS.

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