State Teachers Insurance: Cure Or Chronic Pain? Mark Guydish Opinion

Teacher health insurance has become a cleaver in our community, a single topic that quickly cuts deep across political parties, family bonds and places of employment. It fuels protracted contract negotiations, spawns picket lines and strikes nerves with a harsh and visceral power.
The topic turns highly educated people into blathering automatons spouting stock phrases, and moves blue-collar grunts to surprising eloquence. It can be as simple as “I pay part of my premium, so should they” or as nuanced as “why, really, are we all dealing with such vastly different coverage plans?”
And of course, it sticks repeatedly in the craw of teacher contract talks.
All of which are good reasons to welcome a new state plan to takeover the whole shebang. Except ...
The plan presented in House Bill 1841 – the subject of a Harrisburg legislative hearing last week – has a warm, fuzzy feel to it, kind of like a cup of hot cocoa. The comfort it provides lulls you into ignoring the contents it pours down your gullet.
I’m not saying the bill is bad. It is, in fact, scrupulously neutral. All it really does is set up a 12-member board with a mandate to collect data and decide if a state takeover is feasible. If the answer is yes, the board devises a plan, executes it and oversees it. If the answer is no, the board offers other ways to save money on teacher insurance based on what it learned.
It’s an elegant way for the legislature to engineer a state takeover without actually enacting a state takeover. Lawmakers put the machine in place but don’t dictate (beyond some broad specifications) what it produces. Rather than hammer out details in endless committee meetings and back room vote swapping – a process that typically creates a monster no one likes — the actual state insurance system would be crafted, theoretically, without a single legislator involved, since none would sit on the new board.
Thus, critics can’t snipe at details of the plan because there are no details.
Lots of nagging questions
Instead, they get to snipe at the lack of details. Or more exactly, at the lack of safeguards. How will unions, school boards, administrators and taxpayers really get their say? Why does the state take full control of the terms of coverage but only pay part of the cost, capping how much it will pay toward annual premium increases?
Will some districts that had negotiated modest benefits packages be forced to offer better – and thus more expensive – coverage? Will they be forced to provide coverage to employees (particularly part-time) who currently don’t have any? Will some teachers see their benefits decrease? What about regions where districts have already teamed into a consortium to lower insurance costs, as many here have done?
At the Harrisburg hearing, the Pennsylvania State Education Association – the teachers union – threw cautious, if incomplete, support behind the bill, and that made me wonder. Do they believe a state insurance plan will be best for all teachers? Or do they believe it will be a lot easier to sway the opinions of 12 state board members (four of which, by law, would be union reps) than it is to sway the members of 501 school boards?
The bill addresses an important problem, but it lacks enough direction to make sure the whole thing is headed toward a good solution.
If enacted, HB1841 will be either the first step down a slippery slope best avoided or up a tough climb that’s been avoided for too long.
Lawmakers need to beef up the bill enough to show the difference.