By: Health Insurance
Submitted: 2009-11-17 10:07:39 | Word Count: 937
Public Employees Insurance Agency Executive Director Ted Cheatham listened to public objections against proposed premium increases and benefit cuts in PEIA coverage during a public hearing at Tamarack Tuesday night.
More than 100 people came out to share their disappointment over the proposed policy changes, which would increase annual deductibles by $50 and raise out-of-pocket maximums by an average of $1,500 annually.
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Delegates Rick Moye, D-Raleigh, Linda Sumner, R-Raleigh, and Sally Susman, D-Raleigh, sat among the general public during the hearing.
Noticeably absent were seven of the PEIA’s nine finance board members. Chairman Robert Ferguson and Joshua Sword were the only two in attendance.
“I’m disappointed to point out tonight that there are only two of the nine board members in attendance,” Sword told the audience.
“How can finance board members take public comment into consideration for their decision of what the plan’s going to be when they come back and vote in December if they’re not in the public hearings? It’s very disappointing to me,” Sword said.
Many who signed up to speak also commented on the board members who were no-shows at the Beckley hearing.
“It’s very disappointing that only two board members showed up,” West Virginia Parkways Authority employee Shirley Cook said.
“They can’t listen if they’re not here,” commented Bob Brown, executive director of the West Virginia School Service Personnel Association.
Brown told the audience the service employees he represents earn an average salary of $23,741.72. That’s an average take-home pay of $16,000 annually.
For any of those employees who elect PEIA Plan B, “this increase alone ... will take one-third of their take-home pay away from that,” Brown said. “That, my friend, is obscene.”
Also in attendance was West Virginia Education Association President Dale Lee.
Lee says a 4 percent premium increase, in addition to a 5 percent cut in benefits, “is just wrong.”
“You’re reducing the salaries of some of the lowest paid employees in the nation. You should be ashamed,” Lee contended.
Lee says he has doubts surrounding the whole public hearing process.
“If you have a public hearing where people voice their concerns and the board actually listens and makes adjustments based on the concerns of the people, that’s the true spirit of the way it’s supposed to be,” he said.
He says his dissatisfaction with the PEIA’s public hearing process stems from a previous PEIA proposal which was going to eliminate retiree health insurance subsidies for all public school and state employees hired after June 30, 2010.
Over the summer, hundreds spoke in unanimous opposition against the proposal. The finance board voted to eliminate the benefit anyway in July.
“I have to question whether this public hearing is a sham,” Lee said. “It’s just something they do to fulfill the law, but they’re going to do whatever they want to anyway and call it their fiduciary responsibility.”
Cheatham told The Register-Herald the PEIA board does take into account what the citizens say at the hearings.
“But don’t forget, the board also had a fiduciary responsibility to the state of West Virginia and to the plan itself. There’s statutory, financial, monetary limitations we’ve got to keep. We have a long-term other post-employment benefit liability they have to manage,” he said.
Basically, PEIA needed another 9 percent, he explained.
“Four percent is coming through premium increase and 5 percent in benefit reductions. Most everybody (on PEIA) is paying the same or less than what the national average is paying,” Cheatham added.
Paul Perdue, a Parkways Authority employee and president of the Parkways chapter of United Electric Workers Union 170, argued that every time PEIA boosts insurance costs, PEIA executives get a salary increase.
“It’s just a question of how much does the average worker have to keep paying for them to get their raises?” Perdue said.
“If you’ve got to pay more, the benefits that are being covered should be better. They’re going to charge you more for your deductibles, more for your out-of-pockets, they’re wanting to charge you, for some reason, if you don’t control your health or your weight. We pay $30 extra a pay period if somebody in your family smokes.
“They do not show any appreciation to their employees for the work that they do.”
Retiree Spud Terry, who’s also the president of West Virginia’s Alliance For Retired Americans, told the audience he doesn’t know where he’s going to get the extra money to pay his higher insurance costs.
A former teacher, Terry says, he hates walking into McDonald’s and seeing a retiree, 15 years his senior, forced to re-enter the workforce and sweep floors or clean tables.
“Somebody doesn’t value retired teachers,” Terry told the audience. “Somebody doesn’t value retired public employees.”
PEIA also mentioned proposals to provide incentives to members who file a living will; a $50 per month penalty for employees who carry their spouse on their PEIA coverage, when the spouse has health insurance available from his or her employer; moving several pharmaceutical drugs into different tiers; and providing incentives for those who become “aware of their potential health risks” in regard to waist circumference, blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose.
“These are silent killers,” Cheatham told the audience.
