Health care for public retirees could be reality

Kevin Landrigan reports in his Nashua Telegraph column on a move to set up permanent health care subsidies for retired municipal workers.

The New Hampshire Commission to Propose a Retiree Health Care Benefits Funding Model – that’s a mouthful – took a big leap last week toward finding a viable way to help public retirees get health care from somewhere other than Medicare.

It’s no longer an academic debate. Thanks to the plummeting assets of the New Hampshire Retirement System, the days of a medical subsidy helping to pay some of the coverage costs for retirees are fast disappearing.

By one insider’s estimate, the subsidy no longer applies to as many as half of the existing 52,000 public employees who one day will need health coverage after they’ve ceased working.