Miami Public Schools Need Health Care Reform: Bus and Health Insurance Quotes Medicare

Miami Public Schools Need Health Care Reform

Miami-Dade County Public Schools need meaningful health care reform: Jennie Smith
Author: Chad

The debate over health care reform is heating up across the nation during Congress’s August recess, as Republicans and health care industry lobbies try to stir up anti-reform sentiment by comparing the proposed bills as everything from socialism to Nazism, and as Democrats struggle to fight misinformation even while fighting amongst themselves over such crucial components of the bills as the public option.

Ironically, many of those protesting the health care reform proposals in the street and shouting down debate at raucous town hall meetings are individuals who already have government-run health care: Medicare.  When asked to justify why they consider proposed bills are dangerous “socialized medicine” even as they enjoy the benefits of government-run Medicare, many can offer no better than, “They will have to cut my Medicare benefits to pay for the rest of the plan.”  Some try to link alleged cuts in Medicare to the mythical “death panels” (term coined by failed vice presidential candidate and ex-governor of Alaska Sarah Palin): to cut money out of Medicare, all seniors will be visited by a government bureaucrat who will decide whether they are “worthy” of medical attention anymore, and if not, they will effectively be euthanized.  It does not seem to matter that the provision of the bill in question (which has already been stripped from the bill due to the widely disseminated misinformation), originally proposed by a Republican, would merely have allowed Medicare to cover end-of-life consultations for seniors–totally optional–with their doctors, to discuss things such as living wills and hospice care in the event of terminal illness.  The provision was in no way mandatory and in no way incentivized doctors to deny life-saving care to seniors.  However, ugly rumors have their way of spreading and persisting in the face of evidence to the contrary (as in the case of the supposed “Obama birth certificate” uprising), especially when outlets such as Fox News and conservative talk radio keep insisting on them even when the facts are blatantly against them.

Despite the emotionally-charged war between fact, fiction and loaded words (like “socialism” and “Nazis”) on the streets and in town hall meetings, most people working in Miami-Dade County public schools would agree that meaningful health care reform could not come a moment too soon to blighted South Florida.  During the period of the most brutal budget cuts to public education in decades, the district was put on the line last year by United Healthcare, and was given the choice to either pay millions more in premiums for their employees, or be dropped.  The district shopped around, but as United has a strong corner on the market in this region, no other insurers would offer a better deal.  In an attempt to reconcile the skyrocketing premiums with the promised raise for teachers they had negotiated with the union, the district tried to pass along the increased cost to employees, hitting those with dependents on the health care plan the hardest.  Following huge protest and an almost unanimous vote against their plan by union members, the district backed down and swallowed the enormous cost increases–but at the cost of the teachers’ union-negotiated raise, claiming the funds simply were not there to do both.  To keep the same coverage they had had for years, teachers had to abandon the long-needed cost-of-living raise they had fought so hard for, after years of stagnant salaries even as the cost of living in South Florida had jumped through the roof.

The situation is no less dire for teachers this year, and in many cases, is even more so.  As unemployment remains in the double digits in South Florida, many teachers are the sole breadwinners at home now–and have need their dependents covered by their health insurance.  As budgets continue to shrink, teachers who used to depend on “supplements” (extra money for teaching extra classes, equal to 1/8 of their salary) find their salaries reduced by as much as $10,000 annually, as principals have had to do away with supplements in order to avoid layoffs.  Quickly vanishing, too, are extra income opportunities such as coaching and club sponsor positions.  Even harder-hit oftentimes are clerical and support staff in schools.  12-month clerical workers were reduced to 10 months at the end of last year.  Part-time hourly staff were eliminated for the most part, and many full-time hourly staff saw their hours cut in half.  To avoid having to pay out costly supplements, classrooms are being loaded up with students–often well over 30, despite the supposed regulations that require classes to have 25 students or fewer.  Teachers and staff badly need those cost-of-living raises they were promised…but they also need their health insurance, and United Healthcare would not allow them to have both.

So one would expect that, if United was raising the tab so high on M-DCPS, they must be suffering financially too.  Not so.  United Healthcare posted a 155% increase in profits in the second quarter over last year.  Besides their clients in the private sector, United enjoys huge contracts from government entities, including the M-DCPS school system, but also from the Department of Defense.  Taxpayers are already footing the bill for coverage for state and federal employees…but instead of just paying for their health care, they are also paying for astronomical profits for the insurance companies.

Not to mention breathtaking executive compensation.  United Healthgroup, Inc., paid out $56,899,628 in salaries, bonuses, stock options and other compensation to 5 executives in 2006-2007.

The health insurance giants are currently holding taxpayers hostage, as well as their own clients.  Even as already-strapped taxpayers face massive cuts to public services–including education–they have no choice but to keep bankrolling huge profits and larger-than-life salaries for insurers.

There is little comfort for teachers who are struggling to pay their rent or mortgage and bills in knowing that the raises they so desperately needed and fought so hard for are, instead of helping them pay their bills, funding profits and belief-stretching executive salaries for United Healthcare.

The US spent 17% of its GDP on health care expenditures in 2008–yet 46 million Americans remain uninsured, including children.  We spend more on health care than any other industrialized nation, yet those countries provide health insurance to all of their citizens. The US is the ONLY industrialized nation in the world that does not guarantee all citizens medical coverage.  And still, the typical European country, with its “socialized medicine,” spends less than 10% of its GDP on health care.

The simple fact of the matter is that, as much as the US prides itself on being a “free market country,” there are already public sectors (or “socialized sectors”) of our economy, such as education, military, police, corrections, and justice, just to name a few.  There are very few people out there who would argue that our education system should return to being one where all schools are private and only the rich should be able to get an education; and for all their “free market” frenzy, I have yet to meet a conservative who would approve of dismantling (or drastically reducing) the military, police force or corrections system because it is public and not private.  As long as those sectors exist–and they are necessary in any civilized society–taxpayer money will be spent to keep them running.  And part of keeping them running is paying for the salaries and benefits of their employees.  As long as we do not have a single-payer system in the US (and that proposal is, unfortunately, not even on the table in the current health care debate), taxpayers will therefore be footing the bill for insurance for millions of public employees across those public sectors.

Having a strong public option available in health care would relieve some of the strain on taxpayers, while also improving public employees’ salaries.

To give an example of how it might play out in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, employees could be offered a choice: keep our current plan under United, or switch to the public option and receive the raises that have thus far been withheld from us due, in part, to health care costs.  The raise need not even equal the total amount saved by removing us from United Healthcare: just a part of that savings would come as a huge boon to struggling teachers and district employees.  It would certainly represent huge savings to those with dependents, who already pay high premiums to keep them covered.  The money saved by unenrolling employees from the overpriced United plans could go in part to reinstate the promised raises, and in part to ensure better funding of other areas of the schools–areas such as support staff, building maintenance, supplies (such as textbooks and computers), etc.  All of that, without asking taxpayers for a dollar more than they’re already paying.

Don’t believe it?  Take then into consideration that the costs of health care benefits to the school district for each employee equal roughly 1/3 of a beginning teacher’s base salary.  Those numbers add up very fast.  If the government–a nonprofit entity–can offer big savings in health care (which they can), the only people who would not benefit from that switch would be the insurance companies.

In addition to the argument to be made for the effect of a public option on teacher and district employee salaries and benefits, and on taxpayers, we must also stop a moment to think of how it would affect the children–the very raison d’etre of public education.

As a schoolteacher in an urban, working-class area, a huge number of my students are not covered by health insurance.  This does not mean their parents are lazy or selfish.  Often their parents work multiple jobs just to make ends meet.  But those jobs often do not offer health insurance, or the premiums are so high, especially for dependents, that they simply cannot afford them.  The poorest are usually covered by Medicaid, but there are many, many more who fall through the cracks, because their working parents technically earn too much for them to qualify for Medicaid, yet not enough for them to actually be able to afford private health insurance.  I see cases every day where students suffering from recurring medical problems, such as migraines and stomach ailments, cannot go to a doctor because they are uninsured.  When the problems become severe enough, they are taken to the emergency room, though under normal circumstances the condition would not constitute an emergency.  Last year, one of our students was in a terrible car accident, and was on life support in the hospital for several days before they decided there was no hope of him recovering consciousness and had to pull the plug.   His family, whose home was already in foreclosure and who were already having to choose between paying the electric bill and putting food on the table, was left with a hospital bill for tens of thousands of dollars, in addition to the expenses of a funeral and burial for their 17-year-old son.  Our students took up a collection to assist his family, which managed to collect thousands of dollars before it was shut down by a couple of teachers who felt that it was “inappropriate” for the students to be collecting money for those ends from fellow students and teachers.  The point is simply that, in addition to the ultimate tragedy that any parent dreads, these parents were also left with an enormous financial catastrophe.  In a country like any other in the industrialized world, where health care was guaranteed for all citizens, the parents would have had to deal only with the tragedy of their son’s death–not the tragedy of facing financial ruin as a consequence of their son’s death, when they were already struggling to make ends meet.

Some of our children miss many days of school due to illnesses and conditions that could be easily contained and controlled with access to routine medical care.  The more days of school they miss, the further behind they fall.  Studies show that one component of the achievement gap is a lack of adequate preventive health care in poor, minority populations.  As unemployment remains stable and even grows, and as the number of underemployed continues to swell, in addition to the crisis of the growing ranks of the working poor in our country, more and more children will be affected by loss of or lack of coverage.  Whatever qualms, rightly or wrongly, one may have with their parents, one must recognize that children are children.  They are not responsible for the employment, income, or lack thereof of their parents.  They are not responsible for the family situation they are born into, or for their home life, or for the conditions in their neighborhoods.  No one chooses what family he is born into, or under what conditions.  The fact that there are children across our country, and a high concentration of them in Miami, who are missing school every day due to controllable medical conditions they cannot have treated because they are uninsured, is nothing short of a tragedy and a disgrace.

This country needs meaningful health care reform, and if there is no public option in the bill, it is highly unlikely that the status quo will change greatly.

Miami-Dade County needs health care reform badly…for the sake of our teachers, workers, taxpayers, and most especially, for the sake of our children.  We cannot afford for reform to be watered down to appease special interests, and we cannot afford to wait.

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Miami Public Schools Need Health Care Reform

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