[GOPJ]

Companies will drop health insurance like they dropped pensions when 401K’s came along... We’re creating the darkness...

[slowhandluke]

Companies will drop health insurance like they dropped pensions when 401K’s came along... We’re creating the darkness... I think you are mixing your metaphors. 401Ks are a great thing. Company pensions are dependent on the company staying solvent, and on you stay with that employer to retirement. 401Ks are not dependent on one company, and fully transportable from one employer to the next. Yes, you take on market risk, but that market risk was always there, just hidden. More than one company has gone bankrupt due to bad pension planning or execution (see: GM).

I worked a several companies, but except for the last I didn't stay long enough (7 years or so) to get vested in the pension plans. And even if I had, the plans are so loaded to the back end that it would have been worthless. But the one cash value profit sharing plan (similar to 401K) that I got to roll over later to an IRA paid off nicely.

401K/IRAs are much better than a pension plan for all but the executive class.

As far as ObamaCare goes, you are right, things look dark.

I"m a fan of HSAs, especially if you start young, but that's one Reaganite solution that Obama wants to kill.

The only simple (to express, not do) way to stop this is to kill the income tax, repeal the 16th amendment. Any other way out will go through a morass of compromise, and when good compromises with evil, evil wins.