Unions, retirees blast Jerry Brown’s state worker medical plan
By Jon Ortiz
The Sacramento Bee, March 18, 2015
Unions lined up Wednesday to oppose Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to offer high-deductible medical coverage to state employees, suggesting it could hurt workers’ health instead of improving it.
“We think that high-deductible plans are a very bad thing,” SEIU Local 1000 President Yvonne Walker said during a Senate subcommittee hearing into Brown’s plan.
Meanwhile, state experts said it’s not clear whether a plan with high-monthly premiums and a tax-advantaged health savings account would save money in the long run. The most comprehensive studies take in only three years, not nearly long enough to establish a reliable trend.
Brown wants to add at least one health plan to the state’s menu that would give subscribers lower monthly premiums and a tax-advantaged health-savings account in exchange for higher co-pays for visits to doctor significantly larger deductibles for treatments, hospitalization and drugs.
High-deductible plans and health-savings accounts have become common in the private sector as a way for employers to shift more health care cost to their employees. This year the state will pay about $3 billion for employee medical benefits.
CalPERS, which is dominated by union members and politicians with labor ties, has stayed away from offering the kind of low-premium high-deductible health plan Brown has proposed, said Ann Boynton, who is responsible for the fund’s health plan contracting.
For reference, she noted that the lowest-premium plan CalPERS offers members now, PERS Select, has just 17,000 subscribers, fewest of any of its preferred-provider organization plans.
Member surveys show those subscribers are the most dissatisfied with their coverage, Boynton said, due to the steep co-pays and how hospitals in the preferred networks price services.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article15302201.html
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Retirees Could Lose their ‘Guaranteed’ Health-Care Benefits
By Allison Schrager
Bloomberg Business, March 18, 2015
California’s struggling to pay for health care for retired state employees, with an estimated $72 billion in medical costs coming in the next 30 years. Governor Jerry Brown’s solution: Make workers start contributing money to pay for the health care they’ll need after retiring.
Until recently, the courts had regularly said that health-care benefits must be honored. In January, that changed: The Supreme Court unanimously decided that retiree health benefits are not necessarily guaranteed.
Since 1992, private companies have had to list health-care obligations as a liability on their balance sheets. Being forced to disclose health-care costs led many employers to ditch retiree health care. A Kaiser Foundation report speculates that the remaining plans may soon be eliminated, too.
The Supreme Court’s ruling may finally signal the end of private-sector retirement health benefits. What it means for public-sector retirees is still an open question, although some lawyers say the same ruling will apply. If that’s the case, the consequences may be more far-reaching. Employer health coverage among public-sector retirees is still common. From 2006 to 2010, health plans covered two-thirds of Medicare eligible and three-quarters of early retirees.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-18/retirees-could-lose-their-guaranteed-health-care-benefits
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Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
Private employers have taken the initiative in slowing the cost increases in their health benefit programs. They have been reducing or terminating their retiree health plans. They have also greatly expanded the use of high-deductible health plans which shift costs of care to their employees. Public employees have been relatively insulated from these reductions, largely due to more favorable plans negotiated by their unions. California’s Governor Jerry Brown is now attempting address the state’s budget issues by reducing the state’s contribution to these plans.
These were not free benefits that the unions negotiated. They were paid for by forgoing wage increases. To reduce these benefits without compensatory wage increases amounts to significant pay cuts for the government employees. That is not right.
Also, high-deductible health plans clearly reduce access to appropriate health care primarily because health care becomes less affordable when the patient is faced with greater out-of-pocket costs. CalPERS has confirmed what was already well known about the high-deductible plans: subscribers to these plans are the most dissatisfied. Today’s payers, whether the government or the private sector, are taking it out on their employees through these undesirable reductions in benefits that create potential financial hardships for their employees.
It would be far better to remove the employer, public or private, from the role of being keeper of the health benefits, and to restore, in full, the wage and salary increases that have been forgone to pay for these programs.
With a publicly-financed and publicly-administered single payer program – an improved Medicare for all – there would be no need for employer-sponsored plans for either active or retired employees. Also, the public program would be designed for the benefit of patients needing care, rather than being used inappropriately as a tool to balance public or private budgets.