Blog: Neshaminy Teachers Need To Look at REAL Healthcare Costs

I don't know much about teaching. As a parent I've tried to teach my kids a lot of things about life in general and left the formal education up to the professionals.

I'm a Neshaminy parent and taxpayer. In fact, my kids are third generation Neshaminy students after myself and my father before me. When they were small children, my wife and I made the decision to move back into the school district, most specifically for the great education. So I've been watching the goings on for some time now and for the most part I have kept a low profile.

Now before reading any further please do not call me a teacher basher or a union hater, since I am neither. My own sister is a Neshaminy graduate who is currently a middle school teacher and my step-brother is a member of the operating engineers. I've worked with unions in my own business for my clients and this is not my political agenda, I'm just considering the facts of health insurance in 2012.

When I went to the last school board meeting, I saw the teachers displaying their proposed 8 percent annual contributions to healthcare, I had to really start thinking this over, and in this area I consider myself somewhat of an expert. Since compensation and benefits are what I have been doing for most of my life.

I started doing the math and I began to wonder, can they really be that out of touch from the reality of this healthcare crisis? Or are they just following their union leaders blindly without ever questioning their authority? Or maybe is it just easier to blame the school board for not negotiating or hiding facts?

Have they taken notice that the entire country is dealing with out of control healthcare costs? Did they see that there was this enormous health care reform law passed in 2010 to address the crisis? 

So I went back to my client base of about 400 groups and about the same amount of individuals with health insurance and took a comparative look.

One teacher sign stated that the proposed single annual contribution would be $846.98. That's FIXED, per year. Break it down into a monthly cost thats $70.58. I could not find any client whose premium would be that low. In fact, the average monthly premium was about $350 with the employer and employee splitting the cost, in most cases, in half.

Of course we know that the teacher's $846.98 is only 8 percent so the taxpayer would pay the other 92 percent, or over $20,000 per year. So are we supposed to feel that this is a real concession? Do they really not understand how much health insurance really costs?

How about a family? On the average the premiums are over $1,700 a month or $20,400 per year? A Neshaminy teacher's proposed annual contribution is $2,030.00 based on their own signs is slightly more than most families pay in one month. And thats just the average, as there are many families who pay more that that per month.

Keeping in mind also that the medical plan design is one of the richest coverages you can get as opposed to most of us, that makes the gap even more significant. Eight percent of premium fixed, when the average annual increase is likely to be close to 20 percent each year is not only insignificant sharing of the cost, it's negligible. The taxpayer's 92 percent in the first year will be the cost that expands significantly with each annual increase. Any cost sharing of premiums between the union employees and the taxpayers should at least be increase dollar wise as the premiums rise. Because that fixed annual contribution amount will become a smaller percentage of the premium with each increase, as I am sure that they are aware.

Truth be told, I'm glad that we have good teachers and they can make an exceptional wage with excellent benefits. But if the point of these signs are to show how much you're interested in sharing in the cost, I would say the only point you are making is that you are uninformed about the reality of what health insurance truly costs. Either that or they just don't care what it costs the community to keep funding their benefits, and I don't want to believe that.