Emanuel: Cut health care for Chicago retirees

AFSCME and other unions representing City of Chicago workers are speaking out against Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to eliminate subsidized health care for most city retirees.

Emanuel announced May 15 that he will present the City Council with a plan to phase out health care benefits for all but a handful of city retirees over the next three years. By 2017, retirees would have to purchase their own health care through insurances exchanges established pursuant to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).

AFSCME Council 31 Executive Director Henry Bayer criticized the mayor’s plan, saying that it would “cause anxiety and fear for tens of thousands of seniors who gave their working lives to public service.”

In the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Fraternal Order of Police president Mike Shields posed this stark question: “Why are retirees with the least ability to absorb this financial blow the first ones made to suffer?”

The mayor’s plan would shield those who retired prior to 1989.

“We’re pleased that the oldest retirees will be protected, but many others will not be able to afford higher health care costs,” Bayer said. “We’re particularly concerned about the significant population of city retirees who will not be eligible for Medicare even when they turn 65 because the city never paid in on their behalf.”

Bayer also criticized the Emanuel Administration for bypassing the City’s Labor-Management Health Care Advisory Committee in formulating the proposal.

“The purpose of having an established labor-management process is to ensure that the concerns of employees and retirees are taken into account in developing health care policy for the city," he said. "A change of this magnitude should have been fully vetted in that committee."

The City Council will have final say as to whether the new plan is implemented. AFSCME intends to press concerned aldermen to develop fairer alternatives to the Mayor’s proposal. City of Chicago retirees should call their alderman and ask him or her to help preserve retiree health care benefits.