Livin' Large On OPM

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Michigan's conservative think tank. just released the Michigan School District Health Insurance database where you can find your school district and the costs associated with health care coverage of school employees.  Suffice it to say it's an eye opener.  Michigan taxpayers spend $2 billion a year on the high priced health care of Johnny's teachers, principals, lunch ladies, playground attendants, bus drivers, and custodians.  Multiply this by well over 500 school districts and it doesn't take very long to get to $2 billion.  Regardless of what district employes them, school personnel are basically state employees.  It's also understandable that health care coverage would be offered as part of their pay package.  But when you consider how little they contribute to their own coverage, especially in light of what you might pay for you own, it becomes a little unsettling.  More than a little unsettling really, more like an outrage.

Consider for instance that in more than half of Michigan school districts, 301 to be exact, teachers pay nothing toward their own coverage.  These plans can sometimes cost as much as $16,000 per year!  Even where some districts have had the audacity to save the taxpayer some money in recent years by giving the teachers unions' own health care provider MESSA the boot, some copays might still be as little as $55 per month, or just 4%.  Contrast this to the private sector where average family premiums in Michigan, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, were $2,500 annually, or 22%, on coverage costing just over $11,000.   I don't know about you but I know what an additional $2000 would mean to my wallet.  Put another way, the money the union saves on the subsidization from Michigan taxpayers can go a long way toward getting more Democrats elected to political office.

To see the report from the Mackinac Center, go to  http://www.mackinac.org/depts/epi/insurance.aspx.