Health Care Burdens (States) Managed by Sharing Costs

Given what's happening in Greece with the public employees and others, it doesn't a great leap of intellectual imagination to see this happening in America with the public sector unions and other precipitants of free stuff.

It was all to obvious to the entire country what happened in Wisconsin with the unions attacking the state capital by the thousands, recking havoc on police and legislators for more then two months over Gov. Scott Walker's Act 10 legislation to reduce the budget deficit, 3 billion, and save thousands of jobs in the public sector, which worked beautifully.

The fact that the jobs saved were union jobs meant little to the organizers of the riots, it was about power lost to take money from the employees to fund progressive socialists politicians and, of course, feed the union leaders fat bank accounts. After all, it's really all about the power to control others. Always!

States Rein in Health Insurance Expenses
Source: Dennis Cauchon, "States Rein in Health Insurance Expenses," USA Today, October 23, 2012.

October 26, 2012
Financially strapped state and local governments are saving billions of dollars on health insurance by cutting back on free coverage for employees and raising worker contributions, says USA Today.

•The advantage government sector employees have had in health benefits over private sector employees has declined from $1,523 in 2007 to $891 in 2012.
•Similarly, the share of full-time government employees paying nothing for their coverage declined from 39 percent in 2007 to 30 percent in 2012.
•Yet that number is still higher than the 17 percent of private sector workers that pay nothing for their coverage.
•Moreover, paycheck withdrawals for health insurance are the same for public and private employees at about $425 a month for the family health coverage.

Government employees still benefit from more generous benefits such as lower copayments and deductibles and more choices.

The reductions in benefits for public sector employees stems from the efforts of Republican governors to reduce the costs of employee benefits. State officials have sparred with public employee unions in places like New Jersey, Ohio, Wisconsin and other states.

Public sector employees are taking the fight to courts and legislatures to protect their benefits. They argue that they have already made sacrifices such as taking wage freezes in order to protect health benefits.