Lightfoot's radical public pension plan: Pay more than the minimum.
Grand Canyon. All my art is on Instagram @klonskyart
I’ve been recently diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, an immune problem involving my gut. It’s not curable and the flare ups are uncomfortable to say the least, but it is treatable and manageable with diet and drugs, including one I’ll start taking next week called Entyvio.
Entyvio is taken by infusion and in the United States each infusion costs around $4,000.
In Canada, where they have national healthcare, each Entyvio infusion is free.
Most people are diagnosed with Crohn’s early in life and are not fortunate enough to have the drug covered by Medicare and the teacher health insurance as I am.
For those without insurance the $50,000 a year cost of Entyvio treatment is simply out of reach.
In other retiree news, Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot just proposed a 2023 city budget that includes a radical new idea in dealing with the city’s pension payment.
The Mayor not only is paying the statutory amount. She’s not paying the actuarial amount. She is budgeting for this year’s payment and wants to prepay future payments.
Compare this approach to former Mayor Rahm Emanuel who in his final year wanted to borrow $10 billion more, ostensibly but with no guarantee that it would go to public pensions.
Chicago’s underfunded pensions have dragged down the city’s credit for years prior to Lightfoot.
The state of Illinois does no better.
Lightfoot paid required contributions to all four pension funds for the first time ever in 2022, and plans to pay $2.6 billion in 2023, an increase of 15% from a year earlier.
“Our pension obligations are real,” Lightfoot said in an address to city council members Monday. “Not a nicety, but a necessity for us to meet because essential workers who kept us safe and provided City services during the pandemic and more are depending on us to keep our historic promises to them.”
The early pension payments are on top of regular contributions.
Lightfoot’s many mayoral opponents will criticize the budget but you won’t hear much criticism coming from the city’s workers or retirees.