Medicare Part D: Who Is the Main Constituency?

Watson Wyatt Worldwide has just released a survey showing — again — that Medicare Part D’s employer subsidies and the availability of the new stand‐​alone drug plans are bailing out employers who can no longer deliver on their promises to retirees:

Despite widespread use of the Medicare federal subsidy, a vast majority of employers are planning to curtail their retiree medical plans for current and future retirees in the next five years…


Fourteen percent of employers plan to eliminate the benefit entirely for future post‐​65 retirees and 6 percent plan to eliminate it for their current post‐​65 retirees…

The lesson from the Pension Benefits Guarantee Corporation and other corporate bailouts could not be more clear: if government lets corporations escape the costs of making promises they can’t keep, we’ll get more corporations making promises they can’t keep.