This week, the Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a reform amendment that would grant municipal managers greater control over plan design and also allow easier entry into the GIC (the state employees’ insurance pool). Visit Pioneer’s Blog for a recent post on this topic by Steve Poftak, Pioneer’s Director of Research. Steve notes that over the last decade, the percentage of city and town budgets spent on health care costs has increased from roughly 7% to 14%. Pioneer, among others, has recognized that policymakers must take action to address this growing problem. In 2008, we released a report on GIC’s cost increases, showing that they have been far below those of our Middle Cities, and we have repeatedly (here, here, and here) urged reform. We also built an on-line decision support tool for several communities that would allow individual employees to determine how switching to the GIC would impact them personally. Pioneer commends the House leadership’s decision to tackle this problem, and we hope the Senate and the Administration will show similar resolve. Read more here.
wants to push the costs of the very profitable health insurance and costly pharamaceutical industry on to the average people of Massachusetts. That’s how they get what they want: greater concentration of wealth in the top few.