Health Care Lawsuit

[cdillon]

The following was posted on Second City Blog

•Chicago’s 30,000 retired city employees are trying to stop Mayor Rahm Emanuel from saving $108.7 million — by phasing out the city’s 55 percent subsidy for retiree health care and foisting Obamacare on them.

One week after an unprecedented, triple-drop in Chicago’s bond rating, retirees have filed a class-action lawsuit against the city and its four employee pension funds that threatens to make the financial crisis even worse.

The suit argues that the Illinois Constitution guarantees that municipal pension membership benefits are an “enforcible contractual relationship which may not be diminished or impaired.”

And it would be difficult to pick a better plaintiff than this:
•The lead plaintiff in the lawsuit is Mike Underwood, a retired Chicago Police officer with Parkinson’s disease, whose service on the streets of Austin left him with a laundry list of injuries.

“I wasn’t hiding behind a desk somewhere. I earned these benefits. I paid for them with my blood. I was shot in the head and stabbed. I broke my hand, my leg, my ankle twice and fractured a vertebrae, a cheekbone and I can’t tell you how many ribs,” Underwood said Thursday.

“When I was hired in 1972, one of the benefits I was guaranteed was health care for life. Now that I’m old and sick, they want to take it away from me and put me on Obamacare. I’m not interested. Nobody knows what that cost will be or what it will cover. He’s throwing us into the unknown.”

If you aren't paying attention, start. Now.


Labels: pension


posted by SCC at 12:01 AM 0 comments

The RCPA believes that this is the suit filed on behalf of all members of the Chicago Police officers and retired Chicago Police officers and their annuitant's, by Attorney Krislov.