Finally, The Mainstream Media Gets It -- The Runaway Train Wreck Stories Gather Speed

Reuters is reporting:

Chalk it up as an unintended consequence of Obamacare: a growing number of U.S. employers are aiming to cut their healthcare costs by shifting retirees into the law's new public insurance exchanges, which launch this October.

Detroit, which filed for bankruptcy, hopes to push retirees who are too young for Medicare onto the new public insurance exchanges as a way of shedding healthcare liabilities. Chicago has proposed a plan to migrate most of its 30,000 under-65 retirees to the state exchanges by 2017. And, in the private sector, more than 60 percent of employers are reassessing their retiree health coverage as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to a study to be released this week by Aon Hewitt, the benefits consulting firm.

Unintended consequence? This was obvious from the beginning that this would happen. Who wouldn't try to shift their costs to the federal government. Municipalities and states will shift their costs to ObamaCare, and some major corporations are already doing so. I forget now, but wasn't there a recent article suggesting that Wal-Mart would be moving its employees to ObamaCare. All of a sudden, mainstream media who used to beat up on Wal-Mart and its employee health care program all of a sudden became apoplectic -- suggesting that the Wal-Mart plan was WAY better than the federal government proposal. But I could be wrong on that. But I doubt it. Whatever.

Again, this was not unintended. The lobbyists knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote the bill that the legislators did not read before passing it, and they knew exactly what the INTENDED consequences would be.

Investors should be happy: they will see their larger corporations, the ones with the most employees, and who are most nimble (that is, can act quickly) shift a huge expense off their bottom line.

If there's any unintended consequence, I think it will be this: Wal-Mart could have problems finding older retirees to staff their stores. I assume many older retirees, between the ages of 57 and 65 working at Wal-Mart are doing so for the healthcare benefits.