Beebe puts off teacher buy-in on health plan

Gov. Mike Beebe is delaying the enrollment period for the health-insurance plan for public school employees for one month to give lawmakers, teachers and administrators “some more breathing room” to try to reach a consensus on both short-term and long-range fixes for the financially ailing plan, he said Monday.

If an agreement is reached, Beebe said, he will call a special session to address the matter.

But the Democratic governor declined to speculate on whether a consensus can be reached. Without action, the health-insurance premiums paid by public school employees will increase about 50 percent Jan. 1.

“It is too early to speculate,” Beebe said at a news conference at the state Capitol, where he said he met with about 50 school district superintendents in the morning and about 25 state lawmakers in the afternoon to discuss options. He said he plans to meet teacher and other public school employee groups today to get their input.

“There are some hard decisions and hard work and gut-wrenching tough things that have to be done,” he said. “It is not painless. … Are the taxpayers paying more? Are school districts paying more? Are teachers and other public school employees paying more? And in what combination? Or are we changing benefits significantly to alter that, and if so, how? Are we changing other requirements in terms of participation, and if so, how? A lot of this is complex.”

Earlier in the news conference, he warned that, “you may end up with a consensus among superintendents that the public school employees hate. You may end up a with a consensus that public school employees like that superintendents hate. You may end up with a consensus of both that the Legislature hates.”

To get a deal through the Legislature, “the folks back home have to some degree be supportive or at least enough of them. So you really do need superintendents and teachers to understand or else the legislators end up getting so much pressure that they can’t come to a consensus,” Beebe said.

A few key lawmakers said the odds are better than even that lawmakers will reach an agreement and Beebe will call a special session.

Sen. Jonathan Dismang, R-Searcy, said he believes that everyone wants to resolve this issue.

“I think there will be a sharing of responsibility among both the state and superintendents and the teachers [to fix the health-insurance plan for public school employees],” he said.

“I think we are definitely pointed in the direction of a special session at this time,” Dismang said. “It is pretty likely there will be a special session, [but] we have a lot of work to do on the legislative side.”

House Education Committee Chairman Rep. James McLane, D-Batesville, said he believes the chances of Beebe calling a special session are pretty good.

“I think a basic framework is starting to emerge,” he said. “It’s going to have to be a blended approach across the board” under which more money is funneled into the health-insurance plan and some health-insurance benefits are cut.

Beebe said he decided to delay the start of the enrollment period for the public school employee health-insurance plan by a month from Oct. 1 until Nov. 1 because of “a lot of cooperation and work between various constituencies,” including Democratic and Republican lawmakers. That means the enrollment period will be Nov. 1-30 rather than Oct. 1-31, Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said afterward.

“This gives another month in effect for those employees where they are not forced to make a decision either to keep it or not keep it,” Beebe said

“We are going to need a consensus - if one is going to be achieved from all these various constituencies - by about Oct. 15 or else what comes out Nov. 1 is still going to be the same thing that was coming out Oct. 1,” he said, referring to about 50 percent increases in health insurance premiums for participants in the teacher health insurance plans.

The state’s Employee Benefits Division had informed him that Oct. 15 is “kind of their drop-dead date to give them enough time to be able to print material for Nov. 1,” Beebe said, so “you are not likely to change anything come Jan. 1 if you don’t have it changed by the Oct. 15 date, at least in terms of a consensus.”

If a legislative consensus is reached by Oct. 15, a special session could be called “fairly quickly” after then, depending on lawmakers’ schedules and holiday dates, he said.

The Legislature’s options for fixing the state’s health-insurance plan for public school employees include shifting more state funds to the plan, repealing some tax cuts to provide more funding, requiring school districts to pay more and trimming health insurance benefits, Beebe said last week. The state has about $164.8 million in unappropriated and unallocated surplus, according to state budget administrator Brandon Sharp.

The governor said he talked about several proposals with superintendents and lawmakers, including spending more taxpayer dollars and cutting insurance benefits.

“Whatever solution is going to hurt somebody, and probably all of us in equal shares in terms of cost of money or sacrifice or all of the above,” Beebe said.

“But I don’t think anybody thinks there is not going to be some increase because the population at large ends up with health-insurance premium increases,” he said.

“Right now they are looking at huge premium increases, and that could really deter some that might otherwise sign up if they weren’t getting hit with such large premium increases,” Beebe said.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/24/2013

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