Droid, maybe your pension is secure,but maybe not.Who actually owns the $$ in the pension plan?If the company goes under, are the $$ in the pension fund guarded from other creditors?Many aren't. Retirees are just another group of creditors.
I think the pension fund is actually "owned" by the company.It agrees to pay retirees, but if it goes out of business, they wait in line like everyone else.
There is usually a very good reason to not "overfund" pensions.If you overfund it, then you become a takeover target.The takeover guys then take the excess pension $$ and give it to-THEMSELVES!
There is usually some complicated accounting/guessing/magic involved in predicting future healthcare costs.Unfortunately these highly paid "guessers" have been WRONG! GM and most other big Corps fully fund their pensions according to these guesses.
If we-USA- suddenly got a national healthcare system/single payer-not partially employer based like the REPS. want, that just makes it more complicated/expensive-GM and many other USA Big Corps would suddenly be able to use "some" of the pension fund to fund new products.Toyota/Honda/Nissan's labor cost advantage would drop quite a bit.It wouldn't evaporate- non union workers in TX/MISS. would still be making a heck of a lot less than UAW workers, but the margin would be narrowed. If I was GM, I would sure as heck back the Dems in the next elections.
National Healthcare/single payer would be the one change that could really make a huge dent in Toyota's labor cost advantage.Luck,Charlie