School employees to hear care options

East Baton Rouge Parish school Superintendent Bernard Taylor has come up with four new ways the school system can save money on its medical insurance coverage and has set up five workshops Monday to explain these ideas to active and retired employees.

The proposals range from raising premiums by 25 percent across the board, a move that would affect about 10,000 people, to raising premiums only for the school district’s almost 5,000 retirees and sparing active employees.

The School Board plans to meet Thursday to consider what it wants to do.

Any changes wouldn’t take effect until Jan. 1.

In June, the School Board approved a general operating budget. In addition to $28 million in cuts, the budget called for freezing medical spending at $60.5 million. That decision left an estimated $6.2 million shortfall for 2013.

Since then, the School Board has been unable to settle on ways to fill that hole.

On July 19, the board voted down a proposal to push 2,700 Medicare-eligible retirees into a Medicare supplemental insurance exchange, a move that would have saved an estimated $8.7 million a year.

Here are the newest options:

• Raise premiums on all employees, both active and retired, by 25 percent. Monthly premium increases would range from $17 to $163, depending on the plan. The move would raise $5.4 million a year. It’s labeled Option 1.
• No premium rate hikes, but increases on almost everything else. It’s the most complicated of the four new options. Changes include higher deductibles ranging between $200 a year and $400 a year, higher co-payments ranging from 5 percent to 10 percent more per visit, and higher out-of-pocket maximums ranging from $1,000 to $21,000 more. Only members of the less-generous Core plan would pay more for prescriptions drugs. Overall savings are unclear. It’s labeled Option 3.
• Raise premiums for all employees but increase them more for those on the more generous Buy-Up plan and less for those on the Core plan. For instance, active employees with no dependents who are Buy Up members would pay $43 more a month in premiums whereas an across-the-board increase would raise their monthly premiums just $34.

The same employee on the Core Plan, however, would have to foot an $8 monthly premium hike, compared with a $17 hike under an across-the-board increase.

The move would raise almost $5.4 million a year. It’s labeled Option 5.

• Raise premiums only for retirees. Monthly premium increases for retirees would range from zero to $128 a month, depending on the plan. The move would raise $5.4 million a year. It’s labeled Option 6.

A copy of the presentation on the four new options can be seen at http://news.ebrschools.org/eduWEB2/1000169/docs/hc_options_presentation_doc_813.pdf.

Of the five planned workshops Monday, three are for active employees. They are from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at three locations: McKinley Middle Magnet School, 1550 Eddie Robinson Drive; Scotlandville Magnet High School, 9870 Scotlandville Ave.; and Woodlawn High School, 15755 Jefferson Highway.

The forums are open to active employees from the East Baton Rouge Parish school system.

Comments

1) Comment by Traveler - 11/08/2012

To 8.3: you make an excellent point! Just because a person has been to school does not mean that he/she knows how to teach. Teaching is a complex skill and art, developed through professional training and honed through years of experience. To expand on that observation, Louisiana has a governor who says that he knows more about education than professional educators. Louisiana has a State Superintendent of Education who thinks he's an expert on education because he earned a bachelor's degree, taught for a brief time, was a wonk for a New York politico, and then earned a master's degree from an online institution. Louisiana has a legislature full of elected public servants whose claim to "expertise" on education is listening to the governor and private-sector venture vultures tell them how to vote. By the way, my own credentials are in fine shape----thank you very much.

2) Comment by 8.3 - 11/08/2012

Although it is obvious that one major thing wrong with our public school systems is the fact that everyone is an expert whether they know anything about education or not. .

3) Comment by 8.3 - 11/08/2012

"privatizing maintenance and custodial workers has not saved the system money in the long run (or resulted in better service)" Sacrilege, you bloody liberal>>>

4) Comment by mcarter - 11/08/2012

Traveler, right on. I keep hearing we need budget cuts, but I continue to see teachers, administrators as well as board members traveling to "conventions". No decline there. And I am afraid Bernie has created a couple of positions for his cronies. Nothing ever changes.....

5) Comment by Traveler - 11/08/2012

For years, impractical and unnecessary line item expenses have been "slipped in" to the EBRP school system's annual budget. Reading the budget is a challenge to one's patience and endurance, as well as investigative talents, since some line items are labeled in vague terms. I'll bet a team of teachers could tell the board how to save employees any increase in health insurance costs by eliminating those frivolous line items. For example: cancel those costly junkets that board members take to luxurious destinations for "conferences." Stop replacing textbook series every couple of years----those series are meant to last a lot longer. Admit that privatizing maintenance and custodial workers has not saved the system money in the long run (or resulted in better service) and return to hiring their own maintenance and custodial workers. Let a group of teachers sit around a table for a weekend, along with an "interpreter" to translate those "disguised" line items in the budget----they'll show the school board how to save a lot more than $6.2 million. I hope that system employees will not believe or tolerate the board's claim that there are no other ways to save money except to burden the employees with further increases in their health insurance costs.