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St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Lee Enterprises

Wednesday, April 22, 2009 9:31 PM CDT
State workers, some retirees could see big jump in insurance premiums

By KURT ERICKSON, Lee Springfield Bureau

SPRINGFIELD — State workers and certain state retirees could see massive increases in their health insurance costs, according to a new analysis of Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed budget.

The Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, which produces reports for the General Assembly, is projecting that a state employee who participates in the state’s preferred provider health insurance program would see a 245 percent increase in their monthly insurance costs.

Currently, a state worker in that health plan pays about $89 per month. That amount would jump to $309 per month on July 1 if the governor’s budget proposal is adopted without changes, the report notes.

The governor’s proposal would hit certain retirees even harder.

For a retiree who is not yet old enough to qualify for Medicare, premiums would rise from $12.98 per month to an average of about $582 per month.

Many of the retirees who are not old enough to qualify for Medicare include prison guards, state troopers and state transportation workers.

A spokesman for the state’s largest employee union called the increases “unimaginable.”

The 22-page analysis shows that in many cases, state employees could avoid the higher premiums by moving into a cheaper managed care health insurance program offered by the state.

However, in the case of pre-Medicare retirees, the cost of insurance through a managed care program would still be over $400 per month.

In his spending proposal, Quinn calls for extracting $200 million from employee health care costs in order to help chip away at the state’s budget deficit. However, details of exactly how his plan would work were not available until Tuesday’s report was released.

The governor’s budget office did not immediately respond to questions about the study.

Anders Lindall, spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents many of the state workers affected by the proposed changes, said the union believes Quinn must come to the bargaining table in order to enact the changes.

With a state budget due to be adopted within the next 40 days, the union has received no information regarding the proposal, he said.

“They’ve made no overtures,” Lindall said.

Kurt Erickson can be reached at kurt.erickson@lee.net or 789-0865

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coonbug wrote on Apr 22, 2009 7:46 AM:

" This is absolutely ridiculous! I know people that pay their own health insurance and they dont pay this much per month.

As I reported awhile back, Im willing to pay a little more on income tax to help pay our bills; but this plan of the governors is outrageous! Maybe Gov. Blagojevich was right, maybe this is what the State leadership had in mind all along and Blagojevich refused to go along so they got rid of him.

The state will lose a lot of employees if they enact these kinds of rates I can assure them. It is especially bad going after retirees like this. They already take cuts like 20% in their monthly income by retiring.

Retirees save the State money by retiring early in the long run in a lot of cases. The State no longer has to pay the high salary for that employee thats been around for 30 years. Instead they can hirer somebody for 40-50% less in some cases. Because the employees been around for so long they are probably getting $50-70 thousand a year salary. A new replacement would come in at about $30 thousand.

Besides the simple understanding from the day they started that as a special benefit (for being paid under the amount of which they could get by working in the outside world), they would not have to pay for their health insurance after serving the State for 20 years.

If you think the Teabaggers had huge protest rallies, just wait till you see the State workers stand up against this idea of the Governors.

This Governor and the current majority (Dems) will lose their seats real fast come election day if this is allowed to happen, I can almost gaurantee it. "

MarkS wrote on Apr 22, 2009 1:08 PM:

" If I switch to the managed care plan it will COST the state money. Why? The state's preferred provider plan is self-insuring--and I'm very healthy. The state collects my premiums and pockets them year after year. If I switch to managed care they will need to pay the HMO up front.

What happens if the low-cost (healthwise) employees move to managed care and the high-cost ones stay in the preferred provider plan? "

Stanley Stetson wrote on Apr 22, 2009 4:57 PM:

" * enjoy libtards * hope and change * "