Engler applauds health plan – need more proof that it’d be bad for school employees?
Former Gov. John Engler was famous for his attacks on public school employees and their unions during his 12 years as governor.
So, it’s not surprising that he thinks the scheme for a mandatory health plan for public employees is a great idea – it’s the attack on the hard-earned benefits and bargaining rights of these dedicated workers that he dreamt about for more than a decade.
Engler broke his normal silence on state political matters yesterday, receiving lots of media coverage on his predictable position.
But no one should be fooled by the rhetoric about financial savings that he and other proponents of the plan are promoting. All three experts who testified at yesterday’s hearing on the proposal said that there was no data proving cost savings would come from this plan – watch the video of the testimony for yourself below or view testimony of all the hearings on MEA's YouTube channel.
Comments
The health care legislation
The health care legislation still leaves millions of Americans uninsured, especially the rural residents. Health care is really an acute problem among rural residents. They are twice as likely to be uninsured as urban Americans. As I can see, President Obama has no presented plan and his promises during the campaign period were empty. Maybe our hope is dead.
Retirees can't bargain on their health insurance
All MEA members will eventually retire and find, as I have, that the MPSERS Board, which MEA has yet to get a significant voice - even with a Democratic Governor - simply decides what insurance we get, how much they will take out of our pension, what drugs we can or cannot use by putting on or taking them off the "formulary", etc. My wife is medically fragile and requires constant medical treatments. So far this year our "out-of-pocket" expenses for health. dental, and vision have reached $8579 and are still rising. Of that total $2219 are for the drugs she and I need to control our health problems. Although, I understand why the bulk of the members of MEA are against there being a single statewide insurance plan, or group of plans, for all public employees, thus threatening MESSA, I currently see it as the retirees' only hope for to get a health package that doesn't change by the month and rise every time we get our yearly 3% increase in our pensions. If MEA wants me to lobby against this threat to MESSA it needs to lobby to improve, not constantly cut back and raise the costs of the retirees' health packages.
If the members of our legislature are serious about saving costs for the state provided health and retirement benefits, they need to change the health policies of all elected officials to the plans that pass the greatest costs on to the beneficiaries and charge the highest co-pays, and pay the same % of their salaries that the poorest paid public employee pays for their health package out of their pay. They also need to require the same number of years of service from elected officials as are required of us to get full benefits, with the same requirements that MPSERS members have had.
HB 5345 a bad deal for retirees too
Check out this story on www.mea.org that delves into why this is a bad deal for retirees.
One low-light from that article, regarding experiences in other states with similar programs: "The West Virginia plan is in so much trouble that the state is proposing to cut off all retirees from any health insurance coverage in order to balance its books."
You'll get no argument from anyone at MEA that we need to fully fund retiree health benefits and that the constant rollbacks in coverage are a disservice to those who dedicated their careers to the education of Michigan's children. But this plan isn't the way to fix that.