Even though cities probably won’t be able to just offload retiree costs to the federal government, “you can be sure they will be watching Chicago and Detroit, and the implementation of the exchanges,” said Donald Boyd, senior fellow at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, New York.
“We can expect other cities to pick up on this,” said Richard Nathan, the institute’s former director who is studying the implementation of the health-care law. “I expect it to mushroom.”