Changes to our health plan: Fairness and accuracy issues

Updated 11:00 AM November 17, 2003

Letter

Changes to our health plan: Fairness and accuracy issues

While it's true that U-M faces rising health costs and is planning to increase the share paid by many employees, it's important that any revisions are as fair as possible.

News stories have reported the discussions at campus forums in which many employees suggested that a sliding scale—much like our income tax system—would be fairer. In such a plan those earning, say, $50,000 and up might contribute progressively more, while costs to those making less would be kept low.

The executive committee pointed out real difficulties in achieving a sliding scale, but I'm sure that down the line, if they have the will to do so, administrators can figure out how to lessen the disproportionate burden that lower-paid employees carry in health care costs—and parking fees, too, for that matter.

One way to come up with a more equitable formula is to include employees with moderate to low salaries on the committees, so their experiences and viewpoints are directly taken into account and respected in proposed changes in benefits.

My other point concerns the administration's inaccurate analysis of the forces that are driving up health care costs. In the Oct. 27 University Record story about the proposed changes, the administration attributed skyrocketing costs to "increasing use of cutting-edge technologies in medical diagnosis and treatment; significant advances in prescription drugs; demand by patients for more and better-quality health care services; and workforce shortages that drive labor costs higher."

This analysis omits the leading economic reasons that U.S. health care costs greatly outrun those in other wealthy countries: the profit rip-offs extracted by drug and insurance cartels—including tax write-offs for expenses and advertising costs that contribute zilch to health care.

Until we get a national single-payer health insurance plan, we're going to be stuck seeing those industries siphoning off a portion of our earnings.

To fight for a better deal in such circumstances, particularly for its lower-paid employees, the University may have to unite with other schools in the Big Ten and perhaps beyond, to maximize leverage in bargaining for costs of insurance and pharmaceuticals. The TIAA-CREF organization could serve as a model.

In any event, something must be done to counter corporate agendas that conflict with the values of higher education and the public interest. This poses many unenviable, delicate and challenging problems to administrators, to be sure. So the sooner the University uses its political and intellectual resources to help achieve a national plan that covers everybody, the sooner it will free itself from compromising entanglements in this area and perhaps from the health-coverage business altogether.

Since committees play a vital role in strategizing on the complex employee-benefits issues, it's important that key administrators recognize that the composition of all U-M committees is a fairness issue.

I hope our new vice provost for equity will address that issue. We must especially make sure that key committees are representative cross-sectionally, as it were, because many, if not most, of us lack any organization that gives us a voice in bargaining for our benefits.
—John Woodford, Executive editor, Michigan Today

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Letter

Changes to our health plan: Fairness and accuracy issues

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