<p>The Hartland-Lakeside School District, about 30 miles west of Milwaukee in tiny Hartland, Wis., had a problem in its collective bargaining contract with the local teachers union. </p>
<p>The problem for Hartland-Lakeside was that WEA Trust was charging significantly higher rates than the school district could find on the open market. School officials knew that because they got a better deal from United HealthCare for coverage of nonunion employees. On more than one occasion, Superintendent Glenn Schilling asked WEA Trust why the rates were so high. "I could never get a definitive answer on that," says Schilling. </p>
<p>Changing to a different insurance company would save Hartland-Lakeside hundreds of thousands of dollars that could be spent on key educational priorities -- especially important since the cash-strapped state government was cutting back on education funding. But teachers union officials wouldn't allow it; the WEA Trust requirement was in the contract, and union leaders refused to let Hartland-Lakeside off the hook.</p>
<p>That's where Wisconsin's new budget law came in. The law, bitterly opposed by organized labor in the state and across the nation, limits the collective bargaining powers of some public employees. And it just happens that the Hartland-Lakeside teachers' collective bargaining agreement expired on June 30. So now, freed from the expensive WEA Trust deal, the school district has changed insurers.</p>
<p>"It's going to save us about $690,000 in 2011-2012," says Schilling. Insurance costs that had been about $2.5 million a year will now be around $1.8 million. What union leaders said would be a catastrophe will in fact be a boon to teachers and students.
Hartland-Lakeside isn't the only school district that is pulling free from collective bargaining agreements that mandated WEA Trust coverage. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports the Pewaukee School District, not far from Hartland-Lakeside, will save $378,000 by next year by leaving WEA Trust. The Menomonee Falls School District, farther north, will reportedly save $1.3 million. Facing state cutbacks, the districts can't afford to overpay for union-affiliated coverage.</p>
<p>KAUKAUNA As changes to collective bargaining powers for public workers take effect today, the Kaukauna Area School District is poised to swing from a projected $400,000 budget shortfall next year to a $1.5 million surplus due to health care and retirement savings.</p>
<p>The Kaukauna School Board approved changes Monday to its employee handbook that require staff to cover 12.6 percent of their health insurance and to contribute 5.8 percent of their wages to the states pension system, in accordance with the new collective bargaining law, commonly known as Act 10.</p>
<p>These impacts will allow the district to hire additional teachers (and) reduce projected class sizes, School Board President Todd Arnoldussen wrote in a statement Monday. In addition, time will be available for staff to identify and support students needing individual assistance through individual and small group experiences.</p>
<p>**The district anticipates that elementary class size projections for next year will shrink from 26 students to 23 students. Class sizes for River View Middle School are expected to fall from 28 students to 26 students. </p>
<p>Kaukauna High School classes could be reduced from 31 students to 25 students.</p>
<p>The new rules and updated operating budget also institute $300,000 in merit pay for staff next year, to be awarded at the school boards discretion.**</p>
<p>Who cares. Health Insurance companies should be abolished and replaced with single payer. They are thugs that are getting rich off others suffering and a cause of foreclosure and bankruptcy. Health care shouldn’t be a privilege and we are all complicit in supporting this filthy industry. Makes me sick. I see horror stories all the time as a nurse. Hopefully one day we can live in a society that truly values health and education and doesn’t want to privatize everything. There is such a huge disparity of access between rich and poor. Removing socialistic aspects from health and education and replacing them with pure capitalism is dreadful, distasteful and an insult to civilization. Ick.</p>
<p>That is my opinion.</p>
<p>And I would love to see how the policy changes affect the employees. If it is cheaper for the school district than the policy is probably more constrictive for the employees with higher deductible and lower access and freedom of choice. United Healthcare is one of the worst offenders.</p>
<p>Mspearl, you say that - "There is such a huge disparity of access between rich and poor. " I would say that there a huge disparity of access between the rich and union members (the vast majority of whom are in the public sector) and everyone else.</p>
<p>I don’t play blame the union or the teachers or the firefighters etc…Private sector employees should be up in arms demanding good benefits and access to healthcare. That argument is facilitated by rich corporations that work tirelessly to keep the fight within the confines of the working and middle classes. The fight needs to be waged against the corporations not against each other. The private sector should demand benefits, healthcare and education. </p>
<p>Also, As a child of a family full of teachers who wear clothes from Walmart and drive 10 year old cars I can assure you most public employees are not getting rich and building vomit inducing McMansions.</p>
<p>Is getting rich relevant? Speaking about assurances, it is not hard to compare the salaries and benefits of public employees to the average salaries paid to the people they actually serve or work for? Any idea how this comparison would look for teachers in the Milwaukee Public School system and the city of Milwaukee? How does average salaries and benefits exceeding 100,00 to the average taxpayers in that city? </p>
<p>By the way, it appears that the unions have decided that it is best to sacrifice more than 200 jobs than accepting to contribute 5.8 percent. </p>
<p>Oh wait, MsPearl, public workers should not have to pay for … anything! It should all be given to them. We should be thankful that some have found the courage to seek to eradicate those obnoxious weapons of mass extorsion also known as collective bargaining agreements. </p>
<p>And as the thieves and hypocrites who masquerade as union leaders love to say … This is for the benefit of the children and the generation to come! </p>
<p>As someone who works with health insurance I think the claims that we are all horrible people coming home with our pockets lined with money are a bit far fetched. Sure, I’ve seen some rate increases… but in the 6 years that I’ve worked where I work, I’ve seen rates go DOWN on more then one occasion, I’ve seen refunds be sent out due to the fact that our projected claims experience was less then we thought it would be when setting up premiums for the year, etc. We’re not all bad guys.</p>
<p>Fendergirl, as someone who works in the industry, you should read a bit about the shameful practices of the WEATrust, an organization with close ties to the local unions. </p>
<p>Their practices were at the heart of the disputes in Wisconsin. The public is the victim here; not a few fat cats!</p>
<p>fendergirl, I need to find out where you work. We’ve had our Blue Cross policy for 20 years (and due to pre-existing conditions, are now stuck with it until we get Medicare – yet another argument for single-payer). In all of that time, there’s only been once when the annual increase was in single digits. That was the year that the industry felt threatened by Hillarycare, and decided to behave itself until the crisis passed. The average increase is 15-20%. Last year it was 39% until the outcry caused them to find some “errors” in their calculations, and back off. Oops!</p>
<p>I don’t blame you personally. I know you have nothing to do with the sharks who run Blue Cross, and I doubt that you personally are seeing much of the industry’s record profits. I just wish that people like me – middle-class, getting older, with a pre-existing condition or two – could find something decent that we can afford. I’ve done my research, I’ve talked to brokers. There’s nothing.</p>
<p>Back to the original post. I suppose the union leaders held a gun to the heads of the Heartland-Lakeside school district folks to force them to sign a contract that limited their choice of health insurance providers? I question the abolition of collective bargaining rights just because the public employers have been too lazy, stupid or intimidated to negotiate reasonable contracts.</p>
<p>Bingo! My H sat on two different boards of education. He could not get other board members or the parents from the school to agree to cut back on raises, benefits, etc. I say the parents, because when word got out that negotiations were getting difficult, the parents rallied around the teachers. The unions did not “decide” what they would get, it was granted to them through agreement with their employer. </p>
<p>Same thing at an employer we are familiar with, a local college. Lots of problems and complaints about the administration from the President on down. Well, who put the Pres. in place? The Board of Trustees. So the decisions the Pres. makes, both good (very few) and bad (several) are the result of the decision of the trustees. It was a very lazy search.</p>
<p>The responsibility for these decisions needs to be focused in the right place.</p>
<p>Xiggi, you are not going to change my mind and I am not going to change yours. But I am glad to be on the side of charity, idealism and hope. The Christian values I grew up with advocated social justice and good will, not making millions of dollars from denying treatments to sick people, refusing children insurance on the basis of their pre-existing condition and raising rates beyond what many can afford. I am glad to be on the side of filthy rich teachers with their huge salaries, and police officers and firefighters with theirs. Again, picking apart a teachers salary is an irrelevant distraction and meant to create war amongst the masses and keep the rich safe. Teachers hold advanced degrees and deserve to be compensated within reason and $60,000 is not a grand living. And in my district teachers start out at around $31,000.</p>
<p>I side with people, not corporatists and the Koch brothers and their media puppets and politicians doing the dirty work. I side with optimists and dreamers and (gasp!) socialists. I will gladly give up an extra plasma screen tv, or shorten my vacation by one day to help someone who needs it. </p>
<p>Throw statistics at me, call me Marxist or communist, scream bloody screams with your eyes sealed shut so you don’t see the poverty, depression and illness that sits like ugly toads in our society. Do the dirty work of the corporations who are out for only the dollar. I will fight for the.people and try to remind them that WE are the government and WE can enact change. I am on that side.</p>
Or, employer-sponsored health insurance should be abolished. </p>
<p>If consumers bought their health coverage the same way they buy their life, home, and auto coverage, prices would come down. If you’re too poor or sick to get your own coverage, then that’s when the governement steps in. Like food stamps and subsidized housing. Or, “rich” people can buy the government coverage, if they like it. Like when “rich” people send their kids to public school. </p>
<p>My employer doesn’t provide my food, clothing, and shelter. Why on earth would I expect him to provide my medicine? </p>
<p>Choice, choice, choice. Locking the patient into group plans and CBAs that mandate certain benefits is a major factor that drives up costs.</p>
<p>Oh my God. Healthcare isn’t auto insurance. Please let’s stop making huge profits for insurance companies. I take care of out of control diabetics and we ask them who is their primary care physician and they shake their heads, “I don’t have one.” Then we save their life and spend a million dollars more on their care than we would have if they had access to preventive care and didn’t carry the burden of the pre-existing condition.</p>
<p>A co-worker of mine needed to get her son into the doc for strep throat, wouldn’t give her an appointment because she has a $100 balance. So she took him to ER where her insurance deductible is even more obscene than her office deductible that she still struggles with. Not to mention that her insurance only pays certain % anyway. But her son needed treatment, the ramifications of untreated strep infection can be deadly to heart and kidneys.</p>
<p>She works full time and makes just enough to not qualify for Medicaid for her child. Still can’t afford healthcare. </p>
<p>some of my friends share antibiotics. horrible. I take care of people discharged from skilled rehab who are still too sick to go home but benefits are maxed out. Very sad. I also work with some amazing docs who will write scripts for nursing assistants they know can’t afford to go to see Dr. Gives me a little hope. </p>
<ul>
<li>I really like CC and don’t want to be contentious and obnoxious, but I deal with healthcare on a daily basis and see the health insurance co. more often than not, care about profit over people. Which I guess it is their job as a corporation. I just don’t think it is right and it makes me sick.</li>
</ul>
<p>mspearl, I see your point and sympathize completely regarding the hardships you witness everyday. </p>
<p>My point is simply that individuals should buy their own insurance. Just like they buy their own food, clothing and shelter. We should remove the employer from the equation. If they’re too sick or too poor, then they get coverage from the government. It’s never going to happen, of course, because such a strategy would require a seismic shift in our economy and wage structure. But that’s my idea.</p>
<p>And, unfortunately, eliminating profits probably won’t ever happen either. Where do we draw the line? No profits for insurance companies. Fine. What about pharmaceuticals? Imaging? Supplies? Are those companies allowed to make a profit on their medical products? Why or why not? </p>
<p>Neither one of us has the answer. We’re both guilty of layman’s wishful thinking. But, I can certainly agree with you that the current system is broken. And I’d hope that we could take it a step further to agree that it’s because of many, many causes; not just one. </p>
Quit the hysteria. Insurance companies are not money-eating robots. They are made up of people who are working jobs and receiving salaries. In this era of crippling unemployment, we need every job we can get and to demonize working people is just ludicrous. If you think the government could do better, you are delusional. It is not for nothing that so many doctors will not take new Medicaid/Medicare patients. If you ask the people who don’t have primary doctors, you might find that that’s why and has nothing to do with insurance companies.</p>
<p>
What choices do these people make in their lives? Do they have cable or Internet service? Eat out at lunch? Just like paying for college, paying for one’s healthcare should be first and foremost the family’s responsibility. Did the co-worker speak to the doctor directly and ask to arrange a payment plan?
My husband is a union member and let me tell you, union benefits are killing NYC. There is an entitlement mentality that is staggering. We have great medical coverage, dental coverage, and free yearly eyeglasses, but pay nothing for them. As a person working in the private sector, that blows my mind. Why should taxpayers be expected to pay the whole thing? Where is the personal responsibility? If you give up the responsibility to do these things yourself, you also give up the right to make a choice.</p>