[awinder]

The funding model is completely different. Entitlement programs are funded by employers as a cost of doing business and taxpayers, and they’ve been providing intergovernmental loans for years to keep loan costs down. Meanwhile shoving billions to cover miner health programs and re-shore busted pension funds are paid by the taxpayer, who maybe gets lower coal energy costs, but probably not. That’s before we get into the uncalculated, externalized costs of coal on the environment.