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Morning Sentinel
State employees' health insurance too good a deal
Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel Sunday, May 27, 2007

Maine state employees don't pay anything for their health insurance -- every cent of the premium is paid by the state.

They do pay 40 percent of the premium to cover their family members, and they also pay a modest deductible.

That's a great deal -- a better deal, probably, than many of the people who actually pay for those premiums -- Maine taxpayers -- get at their jobs.

The days of employers picking up 100 percent of the cost of insurance are long gone. With the advent of double-digit annual increases in premiums some years ago, businesses could no longer afford to cover all of the premium.

Even having the employee pick up 10 or 20 or 30 percent still left the employer with a large annual insurance bill. But the cost-sharing hurt the employee, too, probably cutting into pay raises and limiting the amount the employer could invest back into the business.

Employer and employees have both suffered from the rising costs of health care in the United States.

One solution, a modest one, has been to construct premium sharing in such a way that the consumer of health care (the employee) pays enough of the cost of health care to ensure they make medical care decisions based at least a little bit on costs.

If your employer is paying for your insurance, where's the incentive to keep down the costs of your personal health care by taking better care of yourself, stressing preventive care and even questioning whether you always need that expensive test?

A Republican proposal under consideration would raise the employee share from zero to 15 percent. This is one of many proposals being debated this weekend as the Legislature tries to balance the budget. State employees, however, are objecting to having the budget balance on their backs.

Can't blame them -- the increase in premium sharing amounts to a decrease in their take-home pay.

But the 100 percent deal was too good to last forever and for both fiscal and policy reasons, it needs to be changed. The move from paying nothing to paying 15 percent, however, seems like too big a change to make at one time.

That's a big adjustment to make in household budgets with so little time to plan. A fairer approach would be to go to the 15 percent over three years, with a guarantee it would stay at that level for some set period of time.


Reader comments

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Tim Bolton of Augusta, ME
May 30, 2007 8:31 PM
I would like to concur with "scott of Augusta" and take exception to your 5/27/07 editorial supporting increasing payment of health care insurance by State employees. Particularly in professional jobs, state employees earn lower salaries than would be paid for comparable work in the private sector. State employees have traditionally had a benefits package that makes up, in part, for the lower salary. In recent years, State employees have at times received no salary increases at all, or increases sometimes pegged at 2%. The CPI rate of inflation has averaged about 3.3% over the last ten years, so State employee salaries, even with intermittent increases, have actually lost real value over the period due to inflation. As "scott" noted, the solution to this deficiency is not to penalize certain classes of working people fortunate enough to have better health benefits, with the idea of bringing them down to the deteriorating level of coverage in the private sector. We need to be advocating for better health benefits for more people. A few weeks of spending for Bush’s military disaster in Iraq would probably pay for several years of paid health insurance for those not covered or inadequately covered, including veterans who, as we all know, are being shortchanged of their medical benefits. Instead of going after one group of employees, the KJ would be better advised to advocate for better health care coverage in the private sector, where some corporations and top executives are reaping record profits. But I guess the KJ's higher ups at Blethen corporate HQ wouldn’t approve that, would they?report abuse
scott of Augusta, ME
May 30, 2007 12:34 AM
Stewart, whom exactly are you referring to when talking about "the maine taxpayer"? You? Owners of property? Private sector workers? Anyone who has to as much as you or more for anything? The state employees you take issue with pay just like you do...How exactly are they any different than you, save for the fact that they have the bad form to protect what they have?

Aside from "paying their fair share", what is your solution? what's fair? 15%? And do you honestly believe that if made to pay that, it would stay at that amount? Shall we just trust from then on that the legislature will be happy with those extra funds, that anthem/blue cross won't raise costs to whatever they see fit?

Is your solution and ideal answer really just to continue the race to the bottom, pulling everyone with you? report abuse
stewart atwood of Marshfield, ME
May 29, 2007 9:13 PM
To: scott of Augusta, ME

So you get your Health insurance for free! And you have to pay a $400. deductible! Well I have to pay $300.00 a month for my part of Health insurance. And I have a $500. deductible. And my taxes help pay for your insurance also. Time for the Maine tax payer to get a break. STATE WORKS NEED TO PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE!!!report abuse
scott of Augusta, ME
May 29, 2007 6:04 PM
"The days of employers picking up 100 percent of the cost of insurance are long gone."

No, they're not. What's gone is the days of expecting employers to care about the health or well being of its workers. Major employers ARE fully capable of providing more and better care for their employers, but the outstanding question is not whether it's feasible or economically possible, but whether they will be held accountable to do so.

Yes, state workers' health is 100% paid. Except for those who cover their kids. And except for the $400 a year they can pay in deductible. Suddenly, the "free" everyone's so up in arms over is running up in numbers.

If some employees have a better standard of care, what on earth would possess someone to think that the best solution is to lower the bar? By that same logic, as some people still make minimum wage, those who make more should have cuts made to their own salary. After all, paying people more than what's legally required is simply too good a deal to last forever.

Here, of course, is the opening where some asserts the value of the free market in determining wages. Possibly, but with all the protection the federal government affords healthcare providers and business, especially our larger national/multinational employers, it's hardly as though we exist within a truly open and level field.

State employees were and are absolutely right to object to this end run approach to budget cuts, and made their voices clear to the governor's office on this issue. Many people have put in many hours to negotiate and defend state employees' contracts, and this effort on the part of some of our representatives to cut into that is a slap in the face of those that serve and support them daily.

It's unfortunate to see the KJ feeding into a mindset of turning working people against each other, rather than coming to realize that if they combined their efforts, they could all enjoy better benefits and conditions.report abuse

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