It is the taxpayers who are responsible to maintain the funding for these plans. Currently here in CA, we are having to replace the funds lost to market value reductions to continue the plans as contracted with the employee unions. As economists project higher levels of surviving retirees and higher premium costs, the taxpayers are obligated to fund the pension and medical benefit plans for the retirees.
As for 45 year old retirees, why? Are they no longer able to perform the duties of the jobs they were hired to perform? Many of these younger retirees go on to work in the private sector after retiring. This is double dipping in my opinion. That is why the loopholes need to be closed to end these practices. As we become an older society, there are fewer contributers funding these retirees.
i retired at age 45 from a california public agency. why? i became disabled. not only can i not perform the duties i was hired to perform, i had to be shown to not be able to EVER work in ANY job (full or part time) for the remainder of my life. this entailed not only verifications from my doctors but the government's contracted doctors AND a full bore evaluation from an occupation rehab therapist who had to look to weather i could do so much as be a greeter at
walmart (pretty depressing when you are found not to be capable of ever being able to do that).
my pension is not calculated based on a normal retirement pension for a gov employee (some have quoted the 2% formula)-it's a much lower formula. a formula for which they used the "last 3 years of salary", but what people don't realize is there is a rule in most gov. pension plans that your "salary" does'nt generaly include any differentials in pay you recived or what can be non salaried pay that can make up much of your pre-retirement income (we had no raises for years, any increases were called differentials so they did'nt count for any formulas), AND since i TRIED not to retire for several years but had repeated instances where i had to use unpaid fmla (my accruals were long gone), my "average salary" for the formula ended up being around 60% of what it would have read on the classification chart).
it was'nt a given that i would get health care. you were'nt eligible for it under disability unless your disability was determined (not by the doctors-by the employer) to be "service connected". mine was-so i do get medical. i pay over 30% of my gross pension for it, and around another 20% of my gross goes to the co-pays and deductables (but hey-i'm uninsurable otherwise so i have to take what i can get).
even if i could work i am precluded from doing so by law. even a part time minimum wage job to just "test the waters" to see if i could be re-employable would void my disability retirement with no opportunity to re-apply (so bye-bye ever having med insurance).
there are some 45 year olds in public service in california that can retire without a disability. they are largely in "safety" classifications. the remainder generaly can't retire until they hit 50 (and have the minimum number of years in their system). the california public employees retirement system (cal-pers) does'nt require a person be "totaly and forever disabled" to retire on disability (before age 50) but if they qualify (can't do their job duties or those duties in a similar industry/profession) they are capped at what they can earn-they can't make between their pension and their new job more than they made for their BASE salary when they left gov. service (and you have to get approval to take that job-if the duties are close/comparable to what you were doing when you became disabled your disability pension ends).
think i'm getting 30% of my final pay (2.5% x 15 years)?
i also pay more for my share of health care than an active employee (and the future disability retirees-even if they have "service connected" disabilities won't have the option of having insurance if my former employer's current plan is approved).
i know people who receive less than 10% of their final pay from cal pers and are uninsurable. they can't work because if they do their/their kid's insurance is gone (and their share of cost exceeds their pension). oh, yeah-they are realy living "high on the hog" on that fat government pension.
i retired from social services-you would be appalled to see the number of gov. pension recipients who walk out the door on their last day of work only to walk into social services the next day to apply and be granted foodstamps and MediCAL
, see ya, thanks for the years. Oh, before we forget, here's gold watch.
