I heard an interesting story on NPR’s “Morning Edition” this morning: “Gold-Plated Insurance Pays Nearly All Expenses.” Listen to the story and read the accompanying article. Basically, it’s a thoughtful– albeit at this stage largely hypothetical– piece about what happens if, as part of health care/health insurance reform, government taxes so-called “gold-plated” insurance policies.
What struck a nerve for me was this part of the story:
Rusty and Deb Lovell live in Concord, N.H. Rusty had to stop working about a year ago and gets Social Security disability payments. Deb earns a little over $30,000 a year as a secretary at a community college.
But her job also comes with something almost as valuable as her salary — employee health coverage from the state of New Hampshire.
Deb’s share of the premium cost is $60 a month. Yet when combined with what the state contributes, the total premium for her family coverage ranks in the top 4 percent of premiums in the country.
The plan is negotiated by the state employees union, and Deb says the coverage is “so important to us that we have often negotiated for keeping our insurance and foregone raises year after year.”
For the Lovells, the benefit has been priceless. Eight years ago, Rusty was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia.
There are any number of people working at EMU who more or less put up with less take-home salary in part because the insurance benefits are very good– granted, not as good as they used to be, but still pretty good. And, well, maybe gold-plated?
Anyway, listen to the story– an interesting piece.
That’s been the trend for a while now, or at least as long as I’ve been in a union. Whenever a contract was up for negotiation, a lot of the older union vets wanted us younger workers to support benefits because in the long run, benefits eclipsed hourly wages. Suffice it to say, raises when they were handed out were awfully stingy.
Big issue. Sacrificing benefits for the sake of a salary increase is very risky. This especially applies to health insurance benefits. All of the the recent data show that the average premium increase has been more than triple the increase of wages. Unless we can get massive raises, we lose in the end by giving up benefits.
You need to read Andy Dillon’s House Bill 5345. All public employees will be sucked into a State Insurance Plan. The bill is very vague and sets up a whole new state bureaucracy with a 13 member board and the office of the state employer! Scary! It will also include everybody who is a rretired public employee.
I’ve been hearing about the Dillon proposal on public radio in the mornings, but my sense has been that it hasn’t gotten a lot of traction. I don’t know. I also wonder how or if the universities would count in that. From my pov, sometimes people who work at EMU are public employees, and sometimes we’re not.
If you take look at the Bill, higher education is included, as well as state, city, village and county employees. All public employees!
(e) “Public employer” means this state; a city, village,
16 township, county, or other political subdivision of this state; any
17 intergovernmental, metropolitan, or local department, agency, or
18 authority, or other local political subdivision; a school district,
19 a public school academy, or an intermediate school district, as
20 those terms are defined in the revised school code, 1976 PA 451,
21 MCL 380.1 to 380.1852; a community college or junior college
22 described in section 7 of article VIII of the state constitution of
23 1963; or an institution of higher education described in section 4,
24 5, or 6 of article VIII of the state constitution of 1963.