From today’s must-read Globe story on municipal health care costs:
A six-month review by the Globe found that municipal health plans, which cover employees, retirees, and elected officials, provide benefit levels largely unheard of in the private sector. Copays are much lower. Some communities do not force retirees onto Medicare at age 65. Many citizens on elected boards – some after serving as few as six years – receive coverage for life, too.
Coverage for life. I mean, this is totally crazy, isn’t it? You work for a few years for a city, and then you’re entitled to publicly-funded health care for the rest of your life? The story of Elizabeth Debski — who, it must be said, did nothing wrong but simply took what was offered her — is a fine example:
Elizabeth Debski spent eight years as Everett’s city planner, before losing her job in 2006 when a newly elected mayor installed his own team.
But Debski did not leave City Hall empty-handed. In addition to her pension, Debski, at 42, walked away with city-subsidized health care insurance for life. If she lives into her 80s, as actuarial charts predict, taxpayers could pay more than $1 million in all for her family’s health care benefits.
Wow. Anyone else out there in their 40s already set up with a life-long guaranteed health care plan?
And this is really extraordinary:
Some cities and towns do not even compel retirees to use Medicare for nonemergency care once they reach 65, in effect leaving millions of dollars in federal subsidies on the table. Instead, retirees choose to stick with the more generous, and more costly, municipal plans.
Communities, under a state law passed in 1991, can force employees to enroll with Medicare, but only if the change is approved by the city council or town meeting. In some places, that has proven politically difficult, given the clout of active and retired municipal workers.
Boston, Lowell, and Lawrence are among those that have yet to adopt the provision. In Boston alone, there are more than 1,500 retirees who are eligible for Medicare but do not take it, costing the city almost $5 million, according to city estimates.
“Getting into Medicare is a tough vote,” said [Brockton CFO John] Condon. “People don’t like change. And in Brockton, we have more than 700 retirees on the voting rolls.” … Even when retirees are on Medicare, it is still expensive for municipalities, because state mandates require communities to help cover drug costs and other expenses not paid by the program.
Well, first, it’s no damn wonder that municipalities keep having to cut services and hike property taxes. Second, it’s unfortunately hard to see an easy way out of this in the short term, since benefits promised by (ill-advised) contracts may be impossible to rescind after the fact. Though perhaps at least we could amend the 1991 state law to make moving eligible retirees to Medicare mandatory rather than subject to a vote.
Third, though, can we please all agree that this kind of thing has to stop? I appreciate the work that municipal employees do. Really. But please spare me the apologias for extravagant, unsustainable benefit levels as some sort of just reward for folks who decided to work for their town instead of somewhere else. Between, on the one hand, paying for health care for life for folks who could go on Medicare but don’t feel like it because the muni benefits are better, and on the other, not having to close fire stations and libraries or lay off teachers and cops, I will take the latter every time.
