PEBB cuts health benefits

These increases in co-pays largely result from the costs associated with the Obama Health Care law allowing workers to add adult children (up to their 27th birthday) to their health plan. Now, I am all in favor of providing health care to young adults just getting their start in the world, but these added costs are not being shouldered by those who are using them. Single workers with no dependents will heft a large part of this burden, with no double coverage available from their non-existent spouse. Not to mention that they will now be paying increased fees because someone else decided to have children. I believe it’s time the state thought of balancing their budget by covering their actual employees and offering discounted insurance for those who have families. There has to be a way to make this more equitable for all employees while helping to carve huge expenses from the state budget. Classified employees in particular cannot afford to take that much of a cut in pay each month. Yes, faculty are paid substantially less than other AAU institution faculty, but they tend to have more resources than a classified worker who already survives on less than $30,000 a year (I’m being generous with that figure). Also, this surely signals an intrusion into individual medical records. Is PEBB going to start a surveillance unit to determine who it is who smokes or indulges in other risky behaviors? Well, surely not until they hire a consultant to see if that would be feasible.