Going inside the numbers - why Speaker Dillon's plan is faulty

Inside the Numbers
(Source: Michigan Department of Education's Financial Information Database, unless otherwise noted)

• In order to save $900 million, Speaker Dillon's plan would have to cut school employee health care premiums IN HALF. That's not efficiency or a small trim – that's gutting the health insurance of thousands of Michigan workers and their families.
  
  
• During the past three years, Michigan’s school employees have already saved taxpayers more than $700 million in health insurance costs through accepting lower cost health coverage or paying more out of pocket for copays and premiums.
  
  
• Through salary and wage concessions during the past three years, Michigan school employees have saved public schools more than $200 million more. That’s almost a billion dollars in savings for Michigan taxpayers paid for by public school employees alone.  And state and municipal employees are giving in huge numbers as well.
  
  
• In 2008, the $2 billion in excess revenues kept in the bank by Michigan’s public schools would have paid the entire cost of health insurance benefits for all of the state’s school employees. And the schools would still have had almost $200 million in excess revenues left over!
  
  
• While health insurance premium costs for other employers increased by almost 21 percent over the same three-year period, health insurance premiums for school employees actually decreased by more than two percent. (Source: Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research and Educational Trust)
  
  
• Michigan public schools currently spend less than 10 cents of every available dollar on employee health insurance benefits. It would take almost $200 million in additional cost savings to save the district just one penny of that dollar. The massive savings Speaker Dillon claims just aren’t there.
  

Updated: August 4, 2009 11:45 AM