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EDITORIAL: Losing Battle: Everyone Pays for Health Care; Striking Workers Cannot Long Avoid the Inevitable

Posted on: Thursday, 15 June 2006, 15:01 CDT

By The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Jun. 15--The workers of the Franklin County Child Support Enforcement Agency do an important and difficult job for modest wages. But in striking against a contract that would require them to help pay for their own health care, they are fighting a losing battle against long-term economic trends.

About 140 people also were striking because they seek larger raises than the county is willing to approve in contract negotiations, but the county's imposition of an employee fee for health insurance is the major sticking point.

Employees now pay $50 per month for health care when their spouses opt to be on the county insurance plan. The county wants to raise the cost next year: $60 a month for couples and $20 for single-person coverage.

Some agency workers make less than $30,000 a year, and they have said that the main attraction of the job is its benefits.

But the fact that they would pay so little for health care every month is an acknowledgment by the county that, yes, agency workers make modest wages and, therefore, can't bear as much of the health-care burden as private-sector workers do.

Health care can cost private-sector employees hundreds of dollars per month.

In fact, U.S. workers paid an average of $226 a month for family coverage in 2005, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. That amount is more in line with reality, considering that employers have faced doubledigit increases annually in their insurance costs in recent years.

Nobody should expect to escape the price of health care. Not only are costs going through the roof, but when something is free, people have no incentive to conserve it. That's a basic problem with the health-care system in the United States: For many people, somebody else picks up the tab. The consumer doesn't have any incentive to shop and spend wisely.

That $60 a month will not solve the nation's health-care problems, but it's a start toward making people realize that their choice to run to the doctor for every sniffle or to engage in unhealthful activities that result in big medical costs -- diabetes, cancer, heart disease -- have serious financial consequences for themselves and for their employers.

The union argues that because the agency is funded by child-support processing fees and payments from the state and federal governments, offering free insurance to employees doesn't affect county taxpayers. But county taxpayers happen to be state and federal taxpayers, too.

And regardless of where the agency gets its funding, the cost of health care comes out of its budget.

If it must spend more on health care, then it has less to spend on providing services. Those costs will continue to eat up more and more of the budget.

County officials wish to continue offering their employees benefits, at a much lower price than any other organization or company would charge for them. It's a fair deal.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

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