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To: GST who wrote (242744)3/30/2010 1:47:10 PM
From: Broken_ClockRead Replies (1) | Respond to of 306849
 
Thinking of returning to Hawaii? think about much higher taxes. -ng-
Think about this: Current population of HI is 1.3 million. Take out those under 20 yrs old(about 30%) and you have 900,000 adults. 80,000 contribute nothing but their bennies are now guaranteed. I have heard that 75% of the State budget is current and past entitlements for state workers.

High Court Rules Health Benefits Guaranteed
Reported by: Andrew Pereira
Email: apereira@khon2.com
Last Update: 3/29 7:27 pm
Print Story | ShareThis


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High Court Rules Health Benefits Guaranteed

STORY SUMMARY>>>

A recent ruling by the Hawaii Supreme Court will have far reaching financial implications for the state's health benefits trust fund.

On Thursday the court ruled medical benefits acquired by already retired government workers are guaranteed under Hawaii's Constitution.

"That means once you got what you have it cannot be taken away,” said attorney Charles Khim, who successfully argued the case on behalf of six retired government workers with the assistance of local law firm Alston, Hunt, Floyd and Ing.

While the high court ruled Hawaii's Employer-Union Health Benefits Trust Fund can scale back the medical benefits of current or future workers, Khim says the ruling is a victory for those workers who have already retired.

“For current retirees this is great news,” he said. “We're talking about seven years worth of being short changed on chemotherapy, on dental coverage, on a whole host of things that we cited in the lawsuit.”

According to Khim roughly 80,000 retirees and their relatives are covered under the Supreme Court decision. He says the next step is to determine how the EUTF would reinstate coverage that was lost since the state began trimming health benefits in 2003.

Khim says retirees may also be reimbursed for out-of-pocket expenses they were forced to absorb under their diminished health plans.

“We don't have an exact number because we're not actuaries,” Khim said, “but one could imagine that it could be very, very high.”

As healthcare costs have continued to spiral out of control, the EUTF Board of Trustees has embarked on cost cutting measures to ensure the solvency and vitality of the trust fund.

Khim says the EUTF could erect roadblocks in the effort to recalculate benefits owed to retired government workers under the Supreme Court ruling.

“When you don't want to pay money there's all kinds of ways to stall,” he said. “It could take a long time.”

The ultimate decision on how much health coverage is owed to retirees and their families will be made in Honolulu’s First Circuit Court, where the lawsuit was originally filed in 2006.

Khim says the Supreme Court ruling is a Pyrrhic victory for the lead plaintiff in the case, Marion Everson, who died of old age.

“It's just too bad the EUTF didn't do the right thing and grant her the benefits she was entitled to and that we had to go to the Supreme Court to make them do that.”

Russell Pang, Gov. Linda Lingle’s spokesperson, said officials within the administration were still in the process of going through the Supreme Court decision and could not provide comment



To: GST who wrote (242744)3/30/2010 3:49:53 PM
From: roguedolphinRead Replies (1) | Respond to of 306849
 
Give me a "S, give me an "O", give me a "C"...
Message 26423523

From: SliderOnTheBlack 3/30/2010 9:29:15 AM
11 Recommendations of 21371

Give me a "S, give me an "O", give me a "C"...

What does it spell?

O-B-A-M-A-C-A-R-E!

Thomas Sowell is a rare economist who doesn't spew the talking
points agenda of the Fabian Socialist's University of Chicago,
and London School of Economic's banker-gangster/IMF agenda.

Here's Thomas Sowell on Barack Obama, who Sowell says...
"is the further to the left than any politician in US history."

youtube.com

"Obama has an unconstrained (megalomaniacal) vison of the
extreme left... he's further left than FDR, and is further
to the left than any politician in US political history."

[Hyperbole? Obama did had the most liberal voting record
in the entire US Senate - even left of Ted Kennedy.]

"Obama reminds me of a college sophomore who thinks he can
run the world, because he's never had to run anything."

"Obama has accomplished nothing in his entire career...
his entire career has been advanced by rhetoric."

"Obama embraces thuggery, ACORN, Bill Ayres, Father Flagel...
Obama is infinitely more dangerous than a mere crooked politician."

Thank You, Thomas Sowell.

----------------

And now they're coming out of the socialist closet,
no more hiding behind the "progressive" curtain...

Rev. Al Sharpton on: Obamacare = Socialism

youtube.com

Sharpton quote:

"You would have to say the American people overwhelmingly
voted for socialism when they elected Barack Obama."

ie: What the hell did America think they were voting for?!?!

Senator Max (Foster Brooks) Baucus on redistributing wealth
through Obamacare:

youtube.com

"This is also an income shift. It's a shift, it's a leveling
to help lower income Americans. Too often in the last couple
of three years, the maldistribution of income in America has
gone up way too much. The wealthier are getting way, way too
wealthy."

I mean how easy was this...

Less than 15 months after Long Term Capital Management
blew up the market because it's Nobel Prize winning
management team was hyper-leveraged...
Hank Paulson (who was intimately involved in LTCM's bailout)
single handedly strong-armed the SEC into letting
the Wall Street bankster-gangsters self-regulate,
and increase their leverage from 8-12:1 to 40-50:1
....now tell me with a straight face that Hankster the bankster
didn't know that Greenspan was about hand Wall Street the
biggest punch bowl in history.

Then Phil 'the shill' Gramm and his 'quid pro quo' crooked
wife Wendy, unleashed Enron's derivatives scheme with the
Commodity Futures Modernization Act, where they steam rolled
and demonized Brooksley Born as if she was Saddam Hussein.

Not to mention the biggest of all quid pro quo shmo's,
Tres. Sec. Bob Rubin and his repeal of Glass Steagall,
which of course unleashed 'too big to fail' on steroids...
and whodathunkit?!? - immediately upon passage, Mr. Rubin
jumped ship to Mr. Sandy 'slim shady' Weil's Citigroup,
and a hundred million dollar payday.

...no quid pro quo there!

These theiving bastards changed all the laws, blew the
biggest bubble in history, sucked out all their hyper-
leveraged paper profits, and then after it all blew up...
ran to their personal ATM machine, otherwise known as the
US Congress, to have their losses bailed out by the taxpayer.

...taxpayers who are now being whipped into an anti-capitalist,
re-distribute the wealth-socialist frenzy, in which the wealth
will never get redistributed to them, as the bankers & the
corporatists get sweetheart public-private, monopoly capitalism
bailouts from the Stimulus package and the Green Agenda, while
the taxpayer gets an austerity plan consisting of ...

...higher taxes, banktupt state and local governments, massive
union, teacher, police and fire, and government job layoffs,
bankrupt pension plans, and their once gold-plated, Cadillac
health care plans now rolled into government health care,
with massive cuts to medicare, and doctors who won't accept
them, and a new army of 16,500 IRS agents set to drain their
banks accounts of any crumbs the bankster-gangsters left them.

...and a better than 50:50 chance of a default on Social
Security, AND a masive US Dollar devaluation that will make
what's left of Social Security - worthless.

Problem-Agitate-Solution

Create the PROBLEM - the mother of all capitalist bubbles.

AGITATE - the masses with anti-capitalist rhetoric and
promises of wealth redistribution.

Drive the sheeple into the long ago scripted...
Monopoly Capitalism-Socialist SOLUTION
already waiting in the wings.

And now after all the sheeple have been safely herded into
the police/nanny state corral... now they can close the gate,
and crash the system.

That was easy, now wasn't it.

Baaaah...



SOTB