The Empire Center for Public Policy, a project of the Manhattan Institute, issued a scary report earlier this month warning that the billions of dollars a year taxpayers spend on pay-as-you-go health insurance coverage for retired state and local government employees is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Repeatedly noting that many government retirees are too young to be eligible for Medicare – retired Jamestown firefighters, for example – the center’s report notes local governments, school districts and public authorities face a total unfunded liability for public-sector retiree health insurance for today’s workers of nearly $250 billion.

”This figure represents a mammoth potential transfer of wealth from future taxpayers to current government employees and retirees-for a type of benefit that is not available to the vast majority of private-sector workers,” the report notes. ”The burden of retiree health care is clearly unsustainable and unaffordable.”

The Empire Center also notes the vast majority of New York taxpayers work for private firms that do not offer any retiree health coverage at all.

”Even compared with the shrinking number of private employers that still offer such a benefit, retiree health coverage in New York’s public sector is significantly more generous; for retirees of New York City and an untallied number of local governments, retiree health care is free of charge,” the center’s report notes….

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