I agree with Scot Lehigh that moving municipal employees’ health care to the Group Insurance Commission is a desirable thing — even if Kerry Healey also thought so. Health care costs are killing municipal budgets and causing taxes to be raised, and the GIC would save millions.
That being said, sco is right that you’ve got to take the best possible deal, rather than insist on something that’s impossible.
The problem is that we don’t even know what’s possible or not, and legislators tend to be wary of letting a little sunshine in on the deal. It’s one thing for a columnist or blogger to rant at leaders for being “weak” — but isn’t it more productive to identify and pressure those factions that are actively resisting sensible measures?
IOW, why does Lehigh take Reps. Kaufman and Kaprelian and Gov. Patrick to task, who at least seem to understand the principle at stake? Isn’t this a better question: Who are the reps that are pushing back against the GIC takeover? If the people who basically support what you want seem “weak”, maybe the answer is to try to strengthen their hands, rather than weakening them still through public embarassment. If he really cares about the issue, Lehigh might think a little more strategically.
Scot Lehigh? Strategic thinking!? That’s a good one.
What makes GIC cost-effective is standardizing products, coverage and copays so there are thousands of people in each plan. If state employee unions got to negotiate all of those benefit details or use them as leverage in other collective bargaining matters then I suspect the economies of the GIC system would disappear.
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Anyone who is personally involved in city/town government knows that the current framework for negotiating health benefits with local unions is fundamentally flawed. If we don’t address the city/town collective bargaining issues the same way we did decades ago for state employees then IMHO simply moving municipal employees into GIC won’t result in large cost savings and won’t accomplish much of anything.
is political. I agree with you in theory, but how do you make that happen? Where’s the resistance? Who’s feeling the heat from muni unions, who needs to be assured they can do this? Where’s the point of resistance? Lehigh doesn’t even ask this question.
Who is doing the negotiation on behalf of the municipality? In cities and towns w/Town Managers, it’s the mayor or Town Manager. This person has a dual role, one of them being the manager of the very employees you’re negotiating with. Given that they work with these people on a daily basis whereas they are only elected or appointed once every few years, it is easier for them to forget the people they work for.
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The remainder of municipal government — selectmen, city counils, school committees — don’t remind them either. The worst of these is the school committees. Amateurs. They are totally outgunned by the unions. They outbid one another (and believe me, this is not by accident). They have no backbone.
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No, it’s worse than not having backbone. They defend these bad decisions by saying it’s not their fault. It’s the state’s fault for not giving them enough money. They have no interest in making salary and benefit decisions that are in line with a municipal revenues. Then the next year they lay people off or cut important programs in order to demonstrate how an override is needed. And it’s supported, and the spending again outpaces revenue.
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It’s a vicious cycle.
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Case in point… my SC just last night ratified a contract that pays out annual raises of 7%. Next year, when revenue doesn’t keep pace with these increase — and there’s no doubt that it won’t — they will blame the state, the taxpayers (or more specifically the naysayers), the MARKET. They will not recognize that one and only one entity has the power to do anything about this. And that’s the committee themselves.
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I don’t think you’ll make much headway with muni-side unions until you get the school unions under control. And that isn’t going to happen until you get local leaders who start working for the people who elected them rather than the people they employ.
My town’s in a self-insured group.
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So to change the plans, we have to get 15 communities to renegotiate the change with their half-dozen unions each. Let’s see the GIC happen. (Stripping out the terrible-for-management coalition bargaining language would be nice too, but if there’s enough money saved, I’ll consider the extra headaches worth it)
Part of what makes GIC work and keep below the cost increases of most group plans is its superb administrator, Delores Mitchell. She is quite simply one of the most competent negotiators in the health care field, and knows more about what can, and cannot, be achieved and for what cost than anyone else out there.
as latebloomer says “What makes GIC cost-effective is standardizing products, coverage and copays so there are thousands of people in each plan”
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Yes. And this is exactly why so many unions, including AFSCME Council 93, are in favor of long overdue reforms to enact streamlined health financing and other fundamental system improvements to meaningfully address cost, access and quality issues. This reform is known as single payer universal coverage. Payments are made in to a publicly administered HC Trust on a sliding scale by individuals and employers, and everyone is guaranteed quality affordable coverage. It’s what most of the rest of the industrialzed world uses and gets much better quality, health outcomes and cost effectiveness from it.
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Re: union issues, universal coverage with single payer takes health coverage negotiations out of the mix at contract time so it’s good for workers and employers too. It makes hc costs more stable which is a plus for anyone managing a budget, be you a family or a company. It does on the grand scale the good things that GIC is doing for the state-as-employer and the workers who are now covered by GIC, including leges and the guv.
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Why can’t we all have the health and economic benefits of being in one big GIC?
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This is the real question that begs to be asked.
Folks interested in seeing how their community health care costs match up against the state can see here.
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@AnnEM
The larger pool makes sense to me, and I do wonder why even with the existing plan we didn’t make the insurance companies battle one another for a larger part of the market share. Am I wrong in thinking that GIC offers a narrower selection of insurance providers than the Connector?
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Another advantage is that moving under GIC would provide the benefit of professional management to all communities. As I said in my previous post, I do not believe local politicians have what it takes — skills, guts, whatever — to get the job done. Agreeing to contracts that we know we can’t afford is highly irresponsible.
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But, I do wonder… if we don’t address the root causes driving costs, what will keep the trust solvent? When there are imbalances in costs and revenues how will it be balanced — by employee or employer?
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I do think that expanding GIC to the private sector, as it were, is one check that is very important. That, and having the legislators take it, too.
…but I guess I am.
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Six years ago, when we were here in Munich, my spouse was diagnosed with a deep vein thrombosis in his leg. He was whisked off to the local hospital, where he remained for a week. Numerous tests, usw. We were private-pay at the hospital. Cut to chase–we submitted the bills to CIG, and they paid. Every cent.
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CIG might not be perfect, but it’s pretty good. Much better than the Blues. The Blues take your money and give you next to nothing.
The GIC is not all it’s cracked up to be. Ask the Town Administrator in Franklin who discovered that the retired teachers split in the GIC had been changed from to a 10:90 split without ANY notification to ANYONE. Do you think maybe someone should have been notified like say, a Town Administrator, Mayors, Selectmen? Who made the decision with what authority and oversight? Hmmmm. Public records?
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Of course the retirees were not pleased to hear that the town needed to re-evaluate the generosity of the GIC (at the town’s expense and absolute absence of participation in the decision)[http://www.franklin….]. The cost to the town? Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching!
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Then of course there is this history of discontent from MassRetirees [http://www.massretir…] who eschew,
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Trouble in paradise.