Mike Thomas, the Orlando Sentinel columnist, wrote a good column (below) on an issue where part time State Legislators, who are considered part timers, get fully paid free health insurance while part time teachers have to pay a contribution towards their insurance.
To me, this is a bigger issue of the practice of paying full insurance costs for government employees in many agencies, while most businesses and corporations require employees to contribute towards their health care costs. Thomas cites the requirement that part time teachers must pay about $750 per month for family coverage. Most businesses probably can't afford health insurance at all for part time staff, but government does. These practices mean that one married spouse can be a part time teacher and get health coverage, and the other can be working in a business like construction where they may have low or no insurance, and the taxpayer is subsidizing the other spouse's choice to work for a firm without insurance coverage.
However, Thomas is right - why should elected officials be given fully subsidized health insurance without paying a contribution percentage like other employees.
Maybe we need to require that all government agencies post their employee health insurance agreements online, and specifically describe the plans used by elected and senior officials in the government agency.
vj
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orlandosentinel.com/news/columnists/orl-miket2708apr27,0,7908179.column
OrlandoSentinel.com
COMMENTARY
What gall! While slashing Floridians' safety nets, legislators keep free care
Mike Thomas
COMMENTARY
April 27, 2008
As Tallahassee legislators slash schools and social programs, claiming we have to live within our means, they are sparing one program: their free health insurance.
Name another workplace where part-time workers get free, comprehensive medical and dental coverage for themselves and their families.
A part-time teacher in Orange County has to pay about $750 a month for family coverage.
The legislators' benefit is among the most generous in the nation and comes from a state that ranks dead last in what it pays its rank and file.
Kudos to the Florida Health News for publicizing this outrage.
This is what Rep. Dean Cannon of Winter Park said last month as he slashed away at safety nets: "When the economy slows down, we should slow down our spending at the same time . . . in any year, there are needy services we don't have the revenue to provide."
So how do we have the revenue to provide Cannon free health care?
"If I thought reducing the compensation package for legislators would change the state of economy, or change things in the macro picture for the state, I would do it," he says. "Nobody does this job for the salary and benefits."
Then cut them.
And we'll use the $1.5 million to undo some of the damage being done to social-service programs.
It's the gall as much as the amount. Until the public outcry forced them to back off, lawmakers were planning to throw terminally ill Medicaid hospice patients out on the street and deny surgery for poor children with cleft palates -- all the while preserving their free health care.
Where is the outrage from our great moralist and fiscal conservative, Sen. Dan Webster?
His fellow senator, Jim King of Jacksonville, has taken the free health care for 22 years. He is worth $6.5 million.
And let's not leave out House Speaker Marco Rubio, the man who can't seem to cut budgets and taxes enough, unless it's the budget for his annual physical.
Tell me, Marco, how much do we cut nursing homes before you at least pay the same premium as other part-time state employees?
"It is a valued benefit to the members while they are here," says his spokeswoman, Jill Chamberlin. "The issue is how to get more people coverage, not less."
So they'll keep their more, while contemplating your less.
"It is hypocritical," says Becky Cherney, who heads the Florida Health Care Coalition. "To pretend you care about health care, and at the end of day, you cover yourself."
Politician, heal thyself.
Cherney says many private companies have stopped offering health-care coverage to part-time workers altogether because they can't afford it. They can't pay for it by slashing education spending.
The cost of health insurance is going up at the fastest rate in history. This is slamming middle-class families. But I don't have to tell you that. Florida has one of the highest uninsured rates in the nation, with 3.8 million people who are not covered.
"They don't feel the pain," Cherney says of the politicians. "These guys need to feel the pain."
The outrage doesn't stop here. Political appointees get the same freebie coverage. So do managers and supervisors in state government.
But civil-service rank and file pay premiums of up to $180 a month.
"The higher-ups get a free ride," says Doug Martin, lobbyist for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. "Yet the child-protection investigators, the drivers-license inspectors, the correctional officers, the people who do the good work of the state, pay to subsidize what the people making the most money get.
"There is so much unfairness in Florida government, it is hard to know where to begin," he adds. "But this one is really bad."
Mike Thomas can be reached at [email protected] or 407-420-5525.
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