4 Comments Add your own

• 1. Debunked  |  October 2nd, 2010 at 11:19 am

  

  So did teachers. The only difference is their health care was covered “under contract” rather than “out of paycheck.”

  I don’t know how things work for MPS specifically, but I do know that in other states/districts teachers can opt out of health care and instead receive a salary increase. I would imagine it works the same way in MPS.

  Under this new agreement, it merely sounds like they’re going to start having teachers pay a portion of their health care off the salary as opposed to pay cuts.

  Regardless, saying they haven’t been paying for their health care is quite a fallacious statement.

• 2. BobG  |  October 3rd, 2010 at 9:48 am

  

  “most people started doing it 20 years ago.”

  Hell, I’ve always been paying into my own, and I first started working full-time in 1969.

• 3. Dan  |  October 5th, 2010 at 9:39 am

  

  @debunked. When I taught at Westfield H.S., WI. if you didn’t take health insurance, they gave you $500. Well, that is about a month of insurance, hardly a pay raise. I also believe that you had to have some kind of health insurance to do this. So, a single person, with no other health insurance, could not opt out. So, your statement is wrong.

• 4. Debunked  |  October 5th, 2010 at 12:01 pm

  

  I know my wife could have opted out of health insurance and have received a raise of ~$2000 annually.

  I know my mother paid specific amounts out of her paycheck for the health insurance she got from her district.

  Thus, my statement that different areas work differently is correct and the fact is, even if they didn’t allow the teacher to “opt-out and still get paid” the simple reality is that the union for MPS teachers negotiated health care benefits would directly cut into the pay for those teachers. If they weren’t offered any health care, they would be paid slightly more.

  Simple economics should explain that one away.

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