The $1,470-an-hour loophole: Retirees work for 13 days to earn lifetime health care

The Detroit News reports:

Paulette Strong loved the 102 hours she worked as a school aide last year. She enjoyed being around children. The staff "treated her like a queen."

And the benefits were pretty good, too.

For those 102 hours of work, Strong will get most of her medical bills paid by taxpayers for the rest of her life.

A loophole in Michigan's school retirement policy allows the 60-year-old grandmother from Remus and hundreds of former school employees like her to earn lifetime health care at deeply discounted rates -- a perk worth an estimated $150,000 per retiree -- for returning to work for the equivalent of 13 days.

Strong, a former bus driver who left the school district before qualifying for retiree health care, returned as a school aide earning $6.50 an hour. But because those hours earned her inexpensive lifetime dental, vision and medical care, her effective salary was closer to $1,470 an hour.

Government workers really are in a special class by themselves.