Dear Legislators,
Today′s SF Chronicle includes this frightening headline:
Oakland cut active policing to save $20 million per year. But those cuts aren’t necessary! That’s because the city is spending nearly twice that much unnecessarily to provide health insurance to retired police and other employees who aren’t making use of Covered California. Eg, a 53 year old retired Oakland police officer with a $90,000 annual pension, spouse and two kids could get $22,000 per year in federal and state insurance subsidies via CoveredCA. Instead, Oakland is paying for the retiree’s health insurance because — like the state, LAUSD, BART, SF and many others — Oakland hasn’t updated its retiree health rules to take account of the Affordable Care Act and California State Subsidy.
CoveredCA is a marvel. You need to require retired public employees to use it instead of invading their former employers′ budgets for unnecessary subsidies.
