Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Martha Allen, a school librarian from Canaan who is the president of Vermont-NEA, the union representing 12,000 public school educators.
Many families and businesses in Vermont can’t afford the rising costs of health care, in part because certain interests are making a lot of money from the current insurance system. Some defenders of the status quo have even resorted to spreading misinformation about Gov.
Shumlin’s proposed health care reforms and the position of school employees who make up
Vermont-NEA.
The governor is steering health care reform toward a necessary and worthy objective: universal access to high-quality, affordable health care, irrespective of whether or where you work. Under his plan, the eventual achievement of such a “single payer” system is linked to a new insurance exchange, which is mandated by the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Predictably, there’s been a rash of fear mongering and accusations from individuals who profit from high-deductible insurance plans, and have a stake in limiting the scope and effectiveness of the exchange. To pressure the Legislature to revise portions of this year’s exchange bill, pronouncements were made implying that a “back-room” deal was cut to allow school districts’ insurance plans to be “grandfathered” out of the exchange. Schools and their unionized employees, the argument goes, are being accorded a special status denied everyone else.
This is utterly false. Yes, most school district health plans are grandfathered at present. But this is a legal option under the ACA, available to any employer whose insurance plans had workers enrolled on or before March 23, 2010, the day the law was signed.
What makes this baseless charge more odious is the implication that Vermont-NEA and its
members are trying to undermine health care reform. Nothing could be further from the
truth. Our union was one of the main supporters of the law that, among other things, created
Catamount Health and expanded access to Medicaid and VHAP. As a result, almost 40,000 more Vermonters are now enrolled in an affordable public health care program.
Further, since the mid-1990s, Vermont-NEA and the Vermont School Boards’ Insurance Trust
have managed the Vermont Education Health Initiative (VEHI), the largest health insurance
purchasing pool in the state, serving public schools and the State Teachers’ Retirement System.
VEHI’s premium rate increases the past five years have averaged just 2.9 percent, saving taxpayers and school districts millions of dollars. Its extensive wellness programs have contributed significantly to keeping employees healthier and controlling costs.
And now, Vermont-NEA supports the creation of a robust and viable health care exchange. The exchange being designed by the Legislature is guided by the same basic principles as VEHI: give individuals and businesses, starting in 2014, access to comprehensive insurance plans with identical benefits but varied cost-sharing arrangements, and extend to them the risk-sharing protections and cost savings inherent to large purchasing pools. Everyone, we believe, should have access to the same affordable, comprehensive health care coverage available to most school employees through VEHI.
Critics insist the exchange will rob us of insurance “choices.” But how will choice be compromised if you can shop on the exchange for multiple plans with standardized benefits
and different cost-sharing options? Moreover, the exchange’s insurance plans should be more
affordable, because many Vermonters will qualify for federal subsidies.
The real story, which the exchange’s detractors don’t talk about when they run down school
employees and reform advocates, is that high-deductible plans, which are lucrative products, arethe only “choice” available to most small businesses and individuals. Instead, they wax eloquent on choice and consumer empowerment.
Have you ever met anyone “empowered” by the “choice” of a $5,000 or $10,000 deductible?
It’s fair to question and challenge the governor’s reform policies. But it’s wrong to demand
changes to reform legislation to keep pushing high-deductible plans that fatten the wallets of the few while making it harder for many Vermonters to stay healthy and get medical care they can afford.
