Rendell suggests one health plan for school staffs

HARRISBURG - Hoping to stem skyrocketing health-care premiums and prevent crippling teacher strikes, Gov. Rendell proposes adopting one, statewide health-care plan to cover all school employees.

At a news conference yesterday, Rendell said he would push for legislation that would establish a 12-member board to set up a system that would eventually cover all but one of the state's 501 school districts: Philadelphia would be exempt.

The idea, Rendell said, is to do away with the costly battles that school districts endure every few years to work out labor contracts - a process often stymied by disagreements over health benefits that can lead to strikes.

Literally taking that issue off the bargaining table by pooling districts' buying power will save taxpayers money - the administration contends up to $585 million annually - as well as a large dose of frustration.

"This will save money for our school districts and reduce costs for our property taxpayers and help invest in education as we go forward," Rendell said yesterday.

Gesturing to the two lawmakers standing by his side - Republican Rep. Steven R. Nickol and Democratic Rep. Dan Surra - Rendell said the plan had bipartisan support, and added: "There is no Democratic or Republican way to save money."

Under the legislation, school districts would enter the proposed statewide program after their existing contracts expire. As it stands now, most school districts have individual agreements for health-care benefits.

The statewide program, which would cover about 230,000 school employees, would be run by a board composed of four governor's appointees, four school employee representatives, and four school board representatives.

If approved by the legislature, the board would negotiate the specifics of a plan, including the level of coverage and type of benefits. As a result, details of what services would be offered under a statewide plan were not available yesterday.

But Rendell said that school districts currently spend $1.5 billion on medical and prescription drug coverage every year. Health-care premiums, he added, rose 24 percent from 2003 to 2005. Under the proposed statewide plan, school districts would pay into the system based, in part, on the cost of health care in their regions.Also under the proposed plan, the state would pay up to half of the annual increase in health-care costs.

"The idea is to no longer have health care be a local issue," Nickol said.

Still, the governor and other supporters of the plan acknowledge it could be a hard sell.

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association and the Pennsylvania State Education Association said yesterday that they support the plan in theory. But both want to see more detail and are concerned that the legislature could change key elements of the plan.

Some districts, including Philadelphia, worry they will lose the quality of benefit packages negotiated through collective-bargaining agreements.

"We don't like to be forced into anything," said Jack Steinberg, treasurer of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which represents public school teachers in the city. "We would rather retain collective bargaining so we can tailor our benefits to the needs of the system."

Asked yesterday why Philadelphia was the only city that would be exempt from the law - and whether that was unfair - Rendell said: "It was a different union and it would have presented some difficulties."

Nickol said the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers "doesn't like the concept of taking this [health care] off the bargaining table."

He also said that if Philadelphia were to be included, it would hold one of the seats on the 12-member board, effectively putting "an unwilling participant" in the position of formulating a statewide health-care plan.

"If we do a good job, Philadelphia will want to opt in," Nickol said. "And I've never seen Philadelphia walk away from state dollars."