While the national debate over reform of the U.S. health system continues, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives are also considering how to provide relief to the U.S. pension system from the severe impacts of the 2008/2009 global investment crisis.

Both the advocates and opponents of health reform agree that when it comes to health care, America is not what it used to be --- and the same is certainly true of pensions.

The root cause of the problems in both health care and pensions is the same:  both systems have historically been employer-based, and employers have been abandoning both systems in droves.

As the cost of health care and health insurance continues to rise uncontrollably, employers are dropping coverage or requiring employees to pay a larger and larger share of the cost. And as the funding costs of defined benefit pension plans go up, employers are terminating those plans and leaving employees with risky 401(k) savings plans --- if anything at all.

The global meltdown of 2008/2009 has made both health reform and pension relief even more urgent. While the final contours of health reform are far from clear at this point, the contours of pension relief are quite clear. And unlike health reform, pension relief will not require a penny of federal support. The only question is whether Congress will have time before the end of this year to debate and enact both health reform and pension relief.

The pension relief needed by both single-employer plans (maintained by corporations) and multiemployer plans (maintained jointly by labor and management), simply requires extending the time periods over which plans may recognize the extreme investment losses of 2008/2009.

Pension plans set their level of benefits based upon expectations, called actuarial assumptions, of the rate at which their assets and liabilities will grow over time. It is not required that benefits be adjusted up or down every year as investment returns fluctuate. The actuarial assumptions take into account the normal ups and downs of investment markets over time. When, however, investment markets are hit by the equivalent of an economic tsunami as in 2008/2009, the actuarial assumptions go out the window.

The events of 2008/2009 were unparalleled since 1929. To allow plans to adjust to this historic event, Congress needs to permit plan actuaries to apply more flexible rules to phase these historic losses into their asset and liability projections. This can be simply accomplished by modifying the rules for both the amortization and actuarial smoothing of the 2008/2009 losses, to permit them to be phased into plan projections over longer periods of time --- retaining the current rules for all other years.

While all workers have been injured by the deterioration of the health and pension systems in the United States, those with the protection of union representation have been able to retain a greater level of security than those without that protection. And in the coming months, the International Union of Operating Engineers will be working diligently to assure that Congress adopts the necessary legislation to preserve meaningful health and pension security for all.