The Commonwealth’s municipal unions have been relatively silent since the new Municipal Health Insurance Law passed with the state budget. The MTA sent out a statement from the coalition of municipal unions that lobbied on behalf of the municipal employees affected:
Thanks to the historic shared sacrifice pledged by a coalition of public employee unions and retirees, Massachusetts cities and towns will save an estimated $100 million in health insurance costs under a plan approved today by the Legislature. Governor Deval Patrick has promised to sign the plan into law.
These savings will be used to save jobs and protect public education, public safety and other vital local services across the Commonwealth.
The agreement comes after the Public Employees’ Coalition on Municipal Health Insurance first announced in March that teachers, firefighters, police officers and other city and town employees, along with public-sector retirees, would be willing to negotiate higher co-payments and deductibles in light of the fiscal crisis, provided that three core principles were addressed:
- Employees and retirees must have a meaningful voice in the process.
- The sickest employees and retirees must be protected from excessive out-of-pocket expenses.
- Retirees and survivors must be protected from sudden increases in health care costs.
The coalition believes the final legislation respects those principles.
Coalition members recognize that public- and private-sector employees, retirees and the recipients of public services have all been hurt by the recession, the fiscal crisis and the skyrocketing cost of health care, and we are willing to do our share to preserve jobs and programs in our communities.
The coalition believes that now that we have eliminated this distraction from the public debate, we must all focus on the real crisis, which is the ever-spiraling cost of health care for all residents of Massachusetts, and the coalition stands ready to work with the Legislature and governor as we move forward to address this critical issue.
It’s important to note that Massachusetts unions have supported and will continue to support a solution to the health care crisis for all citizens, not just union members. The MTA in particular supports a single-payer system.
I haven’t had time to look into the changes in detail, but the MTA has a Q & A about the law and how it works.
I wonder if anyone really knows or even has a good guess.
This smacks of a “good sounding number.”
I’ve never even seen how this is calculated.
Lowell used to say “$3-4M (they had a home rule petition, now moot) and that’s a pretty big range. How does it extrapolate across the state? Probably 350 ways.
exaggerated.
There are a significant number of municipalities (about 30) that are already meeting the GIC’s cost parameters through their own programs. There are others that are probably close.
Using civilian flaggers was supposed to save a lot of money until the regulations came out and preserved most of the flagging jobs for state police. That number, I think, was also dependent on municipalities negotiating with their individual police departments.
Three totally different plans save the exact same amount of money – a nice, easy number to remember. How is it that smart people never asked the question: where did that number come from, outline where the savings will come from. And who came up with the $100m number?