in order to continue to finance retiree health benefits may affect their willingness to offer these benefits to future retirees. We did not obtain formal agency comments on this report but discussed our estimate of retiree health liabilities with officials from the Department of Labor's Office of Policy Research under the Pension and Welfare Benefit Administration and incorporated their comments where appropriate. As arranged with your office, we are sending copies of this report to interested Senate and House committees. We will make copies available to others on request. The major contributors to this report are listed in appendix VI. Laurence w... Thompoun Lawrence H. Thompson Tables Figure 1: Breakdown of Private Companies' Estimated Total Liabilities for Retiree Health Benefits (As of 1988) Figure 2: PAYG Costs and Annual Contributions to Fund Retiree Health Liabilities in Constant 1988 Dollars (1988-2038) Figure 1.1: Projected Annual Retiree Health Benefit Figure 1.2: Range of Companies' Estimated Accrued Figure IV.2: Medical Cost Inflation (1960-87) Table IV.1: Sensitivity of Estimated Total Liabilities of $402 Billion to Different Values for Selected Variables (1988) Table V.1: Distribution of the Initial Population in 40 4 6 16 19 27 30 31 32 33 34 |