The way it works for me and health insurance is: I had the choice of keeping what I had, or going without. I had to keep it. So I pay full price of what my district pays per person. We have over 15,000 employees, it works out to around $600 a month, for just me. Then I drop another 150 at Walgreens. Then there is what is called an insurance subsidy. You get a $5 credit per year of service up to $150.

They deduct the amount before they cut the check. There is very little left. This is what King Ricky is messing with for Florida public servants. Some days I want to run away to Canada, but it snows there.

They pulled that carp here too.
The state, instead of funding the pension plan as they were obligated to by contract, used the money for the general fund. Then the economy collapsed and they decided that they would make everyone go under a new pension system from that day forward. Anyone who didn't want in on the new plan, who had enough time in could retire and take their agreed upon plan.

Massive numbers of workers filed for retirement to keep their pensions. Then there was no "institutional memory" since no one who knew what was going on was left. So the state had to hire back retired workers at their old pay and still pay them their retirements...

They decided to use the news to generate public support against the "corrupt, bloated state workers who are stealing taxpayers futures" without mentioning that it was their failed policy and the theft of the funds they should have been banking all along that got them into this mess...and the uneducated sheep who cannot think for themselves believed the propaganda, because if you say it loud enough and long enough, they will believe whatever you tell them. Then they used the misdirected hatred to go after the health care those same workers were guaranteed under their contracts, to turn people against the unionized workers, and have created a division in my state that may never heal, and no, it's not Wisconsin.

I truly believe that if we do not stop yelling at each other and allowing "faux news" channels and loudmouthed shills to pump up lies, we are done. There is no longer any compromise or negotiating at the federal, state or local levels of government. It's all out free for all fighting and nothing is getting done. Your elected officials are either right or left and there is no middle ground at all, which is where the majority of American people actually sit when it comes to politics. It's neighbor against neighbor and there isn't even a veil of civility, it's out of control, and somehow it's become ok to be the people those disgusting loudmouths on television need to stay on the air and in power.

The people who are suffering are the people who got up every day and went to work and did their job, believing that they had an agreement that would ensure their hard work for the public sector would be rewarded with a small pension and health care.

I guess I should be glad that I 'retired' from a very long standing hospital that has totally honored what they said it would be when I signed my name on the dotted line in 1971. I met my husband on the first day there, it was his first day also, so we have a nice pension check. I get my SSD and next year he will get his SSD

I think the very worst part of all of this is that employees who work in the public sector do not have the option of Social Security. They were covered under the retirement plans the entity they worked for had in place, the one they were contracted to provide. So if you worked for the public sector all your working life, you are back to work until you die unless you paid into the Social Security system as a part of a second job or have a spouse who worked a job that contributed to Social Security.

The point is that the experts talk about the "three-legged stool" approach to retirement. It includes savings, a retirement plan and health care when you are a public sector worker. The employers have effectively kicked out two legs of that stool and those people now have to figure out how to balance that stool on one leg at a late stage in life, when they did everything right while they worked.

I agree that the retirement plan offered may have to be changed with the employees contributing more, but it has to start with new employees and current workers and not with the retirees and people who are close to retirement. If we don't honor our promises/obligations, we will not be trusted to honor anything else we might promise in the future.

But here they are making the employees contribute 3%, which is what my district was contrbuting to the pension fund. In addition to health insurance going up every year, and no raise for the last 4.

I will get a COLA at the end of this month, about $20. Woohoo. Then my health insurance will go up in Jan, more than that $20. I'm still in the hole.

My question to "those that be" now is, where is that collective 3% going? My district is still crying poor. I truly hope they are hanging on to it, because I have a feeling they are going to have to pay it when King Ricky looses his lawsuit.

I had some fool tell me his company didn't pay the 6.25% SS tax for him. Some people just don't have a clue, but they are the ones who scream the loudest.

I also want to state that there are other insurance and retirement issues that burden the senior population. I did pay into the SS system for all my working years. Unfortuantely I was one of the folks who could not get health insurance at all. It was not offered to me anywhere as I had pre-existing conditions. Just where did my contribution to SS go? I was left a home in a trust. Because of how little I receive, not only did I loose everthing I had, but I am now loosing the one thing I do have my home. All this happened because of no insurance at all. Our country is in trouble for many people, and I think it is sad to see that all our years of working amount to nothing. I regret paying anything into the system all those years as what I received for my disability which I had to take early, does not amount to enough to live on. Folks are being forced to poverty over health conditions and poor insurance practices. I feel bad for everyone who find themselves paying for high health care or None. My son thinks that he will never get to retire at all. The system in broken, and our government is too wrapped up in fighting to do anything constructive at all. It doesn't matter what party we come from. all Americans are in trouble, regarding insurance and health care. ginnie

The way the system is set up in Illinois is that even if you have had a job where you paid into Social Security for years once you receive a pension from the state you are only eligible for approximately 20% of what you would have normally received from SS. (windfall profits) I do not have enough quarters in SS to even qualify for that as most of my employment has been in Illinois.

The two parties could not reach an agreement prior to the deadline so there is supposed to be a special session on pension reform this summer. Ironically both parties are in agreement over cutting benefits for both current retirees and all other employees and they already passed a law now requiring retirees to pay part of their health care premiums. We still do not know how much that will be. They cannot agree on who should be responsible for making the government's contributions -- state government or local governments and universities. The Democrats are trying to shift the costs to the local level as the city of Chicago already is responsible for teachers in the Chicago school district. Republicans are against the shift and argue that the Democrats are not serious about pension reform because they know the Republicans and some downstate Democrats will not support the shift. They believe the shift will result in higher property taxes. Illinois politics My guess is that nothing will happen now prior to the November election.

They did pass legislation last year that cut pension benefits significantly for new employees. Due to the mess that the state is in (Illinois and California are frequently mentioned as being in the worst shape) we have been experiencing a brain drain at the university. It is hard to recruit new quality faculty, younger faculty are leaving and getting jobs elsewhere, and the number of people retiring in the past two years has been record breaking.

wait ...let me see if I understand. You had a job teaching for the state. They dont require you to pay into the social security system, yet at retirement you are allowed to take 20% of what you would have earned had you been paying into the social security system?

Each state has such strange contracts, they mostly leave me scratching my head going "how the heckpie"

I too worked for the state (connecticut) but we paid into SS. no reduction in rate. The employer matched our contributions. if I paid $5, they matched the $5. Its that way in many privately owned places like hospitals and insurance companies. altho I hear many are no longer matching. I had a separate policy of deferred comp. I had X taken out of my check each time and I couldnt touch it. Tax free and all that. Then at retirement age I can pull out as much as I like tax free. if I touch it before retirement age I get hit not only with taxes but also capitol gains.

Is this SS rule similar to the one where a woman can be a home maker, and never work a day in her life, but if her spouse dies she is entitled to collect his SS pension?

SS confuses me.

Dejibo -- No! I guess I did not explain myself clearly. Basically the system does not allow you to receive both full SS and pension at the same time. For example, let's pretend I worked in a position where I paid into SS for 20 years. Then I got a job with the State of Illinois where I no longer could pay into SS and only paid in the state pension system. The state made a choice a long time ago that state employees could not opt in for Social Security so they do not have to make any contributions. After 20 years with the state I decide to retire. Under state law, I can not qualify for both SS and Pension. I will get the state pension and then I can get approximately 20% of what I would have qualified for from the fed govt under Social Security.

I have a friend that recently retired at the age of 65. She worked most of her working life in the private sector. She had 17 years with the state university system. She will only receive a few hundred dollars from Social Security. On the other hand 17 years with the state does result in a higher premium than she would have received from SS.

To make things even more complicated, there are retirees in their 70s and older who do not have medicare as the state did not opt into the medicare system until approximately 1987.

thanks for clearing that up.