The Boston Globe is reporting today that the state commission set up to report back on how the Commonwealth will finance its health care obligations to public retirees estimates that it will take $200 million a year for twenty years to fully fund this obligation. The report estmates a potential $13.3 billion dollar unfunded liability in this account that needs to be dealt with immediately. Commission members pointed to the need for immediate action and the difficult choices that lay ahead. From the Globe:

The state must come up with about $200 million a year for the next 20 years to pay off an estimated $13.3 billion in looming healthcare costs for its retirees, according to a stark new report by a Beacon Hill commission. If the state acts now, and begins socking away the money every year, it could reduce those costs to $7.5 billion, the report says. The report was vague about how the state could come up with the money, and lawmakers are already struggling to fund repairs to crumbling roads and bridges, pay for the rising cost of the state’s new healthcare law, and provide property tax relief to cities and towns.

Lawmakers decried the difficult choices ahead.

Legislators warned that they may not be able to find money for retirees’ healthcare unless they slash other programs or cut benefits for future retirees – options that are sure to meet stiff resistance from the powerful retirees’ lobby.

“It’s going to make the prioritization and choices even more difficult as we go forward, about what to keep and what to cut,” said state Senator Steven C. Panagiotakos, the Senate budget chief, who served on the commission.

Representative Jay R. Kaufman, a Lexington Democrat who cochaired the commission, said the report had at least “tackled the challenge of beginning to address how we are going to provide for public sector retirees.”

“But as the report makes clear, it will take discipline, political will, and a lot of money to do this right,” Kaufman said in a statement. “We dare not fail because the price and consequences of inaction are huge.”

And Treasurer Cahill weighed in as well.

“It can be done with less pain today, than if we put it off but, it’s not easy,” Cahill said. “There is that 800-pound gorilla out there, waiting to be fed – and the liability is not going to get smaller, because healthcare costs are going up.”

The continuing inaction as we head towards the fiscal cliff is stunning. A story yesterday on the terrible fiscal condition of the M.B.T.A. is another in a long line of stories detailing the gross mismanagement that has occurred at the state level for twenty years or more. The potential for the repeal of the state income tax just keeps inching up, day after day.