Key messages in talking with colleagues, friends and neighbors

Be sure to get inside the numbers on Speaker Dillon's faulty plan

Speaker Dillon’s plan to create a statewide health care plan for all public employees is based on shady estimates of cost savings and a state government that can’t even balance a budget.

• Where are the savings coming from? There is no way this plan will deliver on its promise to save millions without drastically cutting benefits and shifting increased costs to employees.

• Public school employees have already delivered millions in savings by accepting lower salaries, cuts to their benefits and sharing in the cost of health care.

• Public school employees are already part of large pools. Creating an even larger pool for health care, as Speaker Dillon proposes, will, at some point, become a cost increase.

• Do we really trust the government to run anything on this large a scale? How has it done so far?

• Speaker Dillon’s plan will eliminate any local control over costs and benefits. Why should we strip local school districts and local governments of the ability to make the right decisions regarding their employees and their communities when it comes to health care benefits?

• Public employees are taxpayers. This does not save them anything. It merely shifts the costs and burdens to them.

• Speaker Dillon’s plan is not the way to deal with the health care issue. We need national leadership from Washington to deal with a national issue—not a risky experiment in Lansing during  disastrous economic times.

Updated: August 4, 2009 11:47 AM