The reason Medicare is going bankrupt is because these CEOs dropped legacy benefits.

[Hamlette]

My Dad worked for a big corporation all his life. They provided health benefits for our family and were supposed to during his retirement as well.

In retirement, my parents actually had triple coverage: Medicare, dad's civilian job, and TriCore (sp?) from his many years in the military both active and reserves.

When he got ill his private health care provider ended up paying very little in large part because they delayed payment, contested EVERY bill, denied bills etc. etc. etc. TriCorp was supposed to be the last coverage to pay but the civilian job coverage was so awful TriCorp and Medicare picked up some of the bills they were not required to pay (IMHO) because the whole private insurance thing was so difficult to deal with. (Dad had one of those long, drawn out illnesses, six years, I think they took pity on my mom as they got to know her so well and she is/was so nice.)

So, if these freaking CEOs think we should cut Medicare, they should offer legacy benefits to employees who give their lives to make money for their freaking companies!

[exboyfil]

1. Good luck with that

I work for a really good employer. Aboout five years before I joined they changed the retirement health benefits so that new hires would not get it (you used to be able to stay on the subsidized company plan until eligibility at 65). This led to and continues to feed large numbers of workers who retire around 60 knowing that they have secure healthcare. Some of those workers then get hired back as consultants at my employer.

I wonder if they are ready for the retention of older workers who will move heaven and earth to stay on their jobs (67 in my case since that is when I get full retirement benefits from the company). My dad retired at 60, promptly got cancer, and died at 65. Before that he got screwed on his pension (it was an old defined benefit plan that would have rocketed up in benefits the last years of his employment because of his increased salary from a higher position - instead it froze in place, cashed out, and started another pension with the company that bought my dad's old company. My experience with defined benefit has not been much better (lost job at six years - pension calculation was a pittance). Second job pension plan stopped after four years, cashed out for a pittance, and started defined contribution (wish I had that from the start of my career). Most of my retirement wealth comes from IRA/401k savings, rolling the two cash outs into IRAs, and the defined cash plan I had for five years.

[BlueCaliDem]

2. Big Corp doesn't see their employees as people. They see them as indentured slaves.

Or just slaves.

We're only as good to them as our productivity in the workplace. Just like the old colonialists of the past, they don't care about anyone but themselves, and believe we small people should care about them and theirs, too.

Unless and until the American worker understands this - specifically, the idiot RepubLemmings - this is how it will continue to be.

[LeftofObama]

6. Very true!

I remember in my younger working years when employees were referred to as 'personnel'. The department one reported to was the 'personnel' department. Later that department was changed to 'human resources'. That term, human resources, has always bothered me. It just sounds so impersonal and, IMHO, rather savage to refer to a person as a resource.

[BlueCaliDem]

9. I've never liked "human resources", either. Reminds me of Soylent Green for some reason.

Resources . . . resources for what? I dunno . . . it has a nefarious vibe about it.

How about just employee? And instead of "boss", just employer? Boss sounds so, I dunno . . .

The Dutch say only pets have a boss, and NO human is another human's pet.

[kathman-duzi]

3. So sorry to hear of your parents going thru the betrayal and humiliation. This is why I say our

representatives fed and state should be in the same pool as the rest of the nation. Then well see how it goes. Single payer for all.

My company diminished my healthcare to the point that it is pointless to continue with it!

One more thing I find absolutely unforgivable is that people in the dusk of their lives need to hire an accountant to make sense of all the bills involved in even an illness of 7 months or hospitalization of 4 days. The paperwork is numbing.

[SoCalDem]

5. Military (when my father joined the AF ) promised lifetime care for him and spouse

by the time he retired after 26 years, it was service person only...and Tri-Care at that. He died shortly after retirement, so it did not matter that much to him, but my mother was basically uncovered for the duration of her life until she was on medicare.

Unions were the reason why retirement health care was ever offered.. And as the vultures moved in during the 80's, most of that went away..All those decades of wage concessions in favor of enhanced retirement benefits ended up just being stolen labor and deceit.

[HiPointDem]

4. there's been a lot of that during the last 30-odd years. personally, i think that if

someone made a list of all the promised pensions & medical benefits people have been screwed out of during those years, it would be in the billions of dollars, maybe trillions.

[Egalitarian Thug]

8. Trillions for sure. n/t

[Egalitarian Thug]

7. That is symptomatic of why everything is as fucked up as it is here. Our government just

turned these jackals lose on the nation 40 years ago and they stole every bit of what our parents and grandparents built up and then maxed out the credit card and stole that, too.