US corporations save $3 trillion by putting retirees on Obamacare

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Corporate America stands to save trillions of dollars by pushing workers and retirees off company-sponsored health plans onto less costly insurance exchanges, and household names from General Electric(GE - Get Report) to IBM (IBM- Get Report) and Wal-Mart Stores (WMT - Get Report)are on the cutting edge of the shift.

GE alone reported saving $3.3 billion by moving retired production workers to a private exchange, where they will join salaried retirees, according to a quarterly filing last month. The Fairfield, Conn.-based company had already reported $832 million in savings on retiree health benefits in 2012 and $586 million in 2014.

"We are in a transitional period," Thomas Kochan, a professor of employment policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in an interview. "U.S. corporations would save an aggregate $3.25 trillion by moving their employees and retirees to private exchanges."

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