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House Speaker Andy Dillon (D-Redford Township) serving the 17th House District has announced a major overhaul of Michigan’s state employee health care system. He claims that the change is expected to yield close to $1 billion in savings annually. The overhaul consolidates the hundreds of different plans serving Michigan’s public sector employees and retirees. The plan calls for implementation in January 2010. The idea is to pool all of the employees creating a large insurance pool that would command greater savings. Underwriters will tell you that the savings are not as significant once the pool exceeds 20,000. Under Dillon’s plan the bulk of the savings would come from slashing the benefits while at the same time magnify cost shifts to the employee and retiree. As it currently stands, MAP is opposed to this proposal. Problems that we see with this plan is that it states the standardized health care coverage offered to Michigan public sector employees and retirees should be similar to those offered to public sector employees and retirees in other states, but fails to identify which “other states”. Another unproven claim is that this plan will somehow sustain collective bargaining rights. We don’t see how that can happen. Dillon remarks, “For too long, Michigan has wasted precious tax dollars on an inefficient patchwork of thousands of separate, widely varying health care plans for its public sector employees and retirees. This drains state resources essential for our economic recovery, threatens the jobs of police and firefighters and takes funding away from teachers and classrooms.” Again, we at MAP, fail to see how the current plans in place threaten our police and firefighter jobs. Collective bargaining put the current plans in place, and any attempt to change that is a threat to our bargaining rights. Additionally, Dillon states on the website www.017.housedems.com “The state will offer its health care plans to all residents and businesses once the transition to the new system is complete, making affordable health care more accessible in Michigan.” We believe that the solutions to the State’s fiscal problems do not lie with slashing public employees’ health benefits. That issue is best left with the local parties, management and labor, to resolve. The true solution to the state’s fiscal problems lie with a complete overhaul of the state’s taxation system. Proposal A is not working - Revenue Sharing, which was promised to the schools and local government as a replacement for the restrictions on local and school authorities millage campaigns has dried up. The state is keeping the money that was promised since they have their own fiscal problems. Assume Dillon’s plan is implemented and public employee health benefits are slashed, what do we do next year? Cut pensions? Ask public employees to pay for their jobs? |
