Workers are paying more for their health care and state and local government employees are paying less than the private sector, according to a new national survey.
Workers are paying nearly $4,000 this year for family health care coverage, an increase of 14 percent or $482 from last year, according to the annual survey done by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust.
State and local government employees paid 9 percent of their cost for single coverage and 25 percent for family plans, both lowest among the nine employee sector categories surveyed. The highest of the others was the retail sector where employees paid 25 percent of their costs for single coverage and 34 percent for the family plan.
The average for all industries was 19 percent for single coverage and 30 percent for the family plan.
"With the economy struggling, businesses have been shifting more of the costs of health insurance to workers through premiums, deductibles and other cost-sharing," Kaiser President and CEO Drew Altman said in a press release. "This may be helping to stem the rapid rise in premiums that we saw in the early 2000s, but it also means employer coverage is less comprehensive. From a consumer perspective, the cost of health insurance just keeps going up faster than wages."
Jack McHugh, senior legislative analyst for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said public sector workers share less of the burden because government is motivated by politics and dominated by the power of public employee unions.
"So not surprisingly, it's also less responsive to economic changes that have swept through the rest of the economy," McHugh wrote in an e-mail. "Some on the Left once hoped that government employees would become a 'vanguard of labor,' setting benefit standards that would become the norm. Instead, they've become a privileged class, enjoying unsustainable rewards the rest of us can only imagine."
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FROM MICHIGAN HOME HELP PROGRAM PROVIDERS — OFTEN FAMILY MEMBERS
ATTORNEY GENERAL ORDERED THE STATE TO STOP TAKING MONEY ON MAY 25, 2012
opinion May 25, 2012
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) "organized” Michigan's self-employed Home Help Program providers for the purpose of skimming dues from their ailing and disabled clients' Medicaid subsidy checks. The majority of these providers are relatives or friends taking care of loved ones. It’s been estimated that less than 25 percent of the providers are hired in an employment setting.
The first counter tallies SEIU dues skimmed since the union and state officials first launched this scheme in late 2006. The second shows the amount skimmed since June 9, 2011, when the Michigan House passed and sent to the Senate a bill to ban this and all similar “stealth unionization” efforts. The third counter shows the dues skimmed since the Governor signed the bill into law on April 10, 2012. The fourth counter shows the amount skimmed since May 25, 2012, when the Attorney General opinion was announced.
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