Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 5, 1992 TAG: 9202050262
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ROCKY MOUNT LENGTH: Long
WORKERS WORRY INSURANCE COSTS WILL OVERTAKE PAY
THE PRICE paid for the security of health insurance is skyrocketing. In Franklin County, school employees have watched their premiums rise by 70 percent over three years; those in lower-paying jobs have been hit hardest.
Debra Meeks started driving a school bus five years ago so her family could qualify for health insurance benefits.
But Meeks said she never imagined that insurance premiums would climb so rapidly that all she brings home each month is about $200.
She wonders when the day will come that her part-time salary will not cover the monthly premiums. "It's going to catch up with everyone sooner or later," she said.
Like workers nationwide, Franklin County school employees are feeling the twin pinch of runaway health costs and stagnant wages.
Though they enjoy job security envied by many in this community rooted in textile and furniture manufacturing, many school employees say their standard of living has declined in recent years because of health insurance costs. Last year alone, the $100-a-month increase in employee costs for a family plan with Blue Cross/Blue Shield amounted to a 44 percent jump.
Hardest hit have been support personnel - cafeteria workers, secretaries, custodians and bus drivers - whose relatively low salaries cannot insulate them from insurance costs. For instance, typical cafeteria workers now pay more than half of their salaries for family coverage.
Some support personnel fear they could join the ranks of 35 million Americans without any health insurance.
Eldridge Altice, maintenance supervisor at Franklin County High School, said his workers are worried by the prospect of another big premium increase this year.
"It's got to the point where they can't afford it," Altice said.
Superintendent Len Gereau said protecting workers from an increase of another 25-30 percent in Blue Cross/Blue Shield premiums this fall will be a priority in budget negotiations with the Board of Supervisors.
Gereau said extra pay would be only a stopgap measure. What's needed, he said, is an overhaul of the nation's health-care system.
The increase in employer medical plans has averaged 15 percent a year over the past four years - three times the rate of increase of a national index that measures inflation of most goods and services. Factors behind the rise include large catastrophic-illness claims, increased use of substance-abuse and mental-health services, and the practice of increasing charges to the private sector to offset underpayments from government programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
"It's a national disaster," Gereau said. "I don't think Washington really understands what's going on."
Franklin County school employees have seen monthly payroll deductions for family coverage through Blue Cross/Blue Shield increase 70 percent in three years - $211.70 to $361.38.
Single-employee coverage has increased from $46 to $84.88.
Salaries have failed to keep pace with the increases. The school system began paying the employees' share of retirement benefits in 1990-91, which amounted to a 5 percent raise for most employees. But salaries were frozen for 1991-92.
"This is my third year here, and I make less money now than when I started," said Susan Hall, a secretary at Franklin County High School.
Coping with the costs
Wilda Clement, a cafeteria worker at Benjamin Franklin Middle School, said insurance costs have hit her at a time when she's struggling to put her daughter through Radford University.
"When you're on a fixed income and they take 70 more dollars out of your paycheck each month, it's hard," said Clement, a widow.
"How do I get by? I do without - like all mommies," she said. She also works part-time at a Dairy Queen.
Linda Patterson, a secretary at the middle school, said she and her husband, a self-employed truck driver, have learned to economize.
They plant a larger garden, can vegetables, buy bulk quantities of meat and rarely spend a night out.
As much as she gripes about the cost, Patterson said she could not imagine going without insurance. "We go umpteen years without using it, but that one hospital stay could wipe out everything you have," she said.
Some school employees have opted out of the expensive family plan and have stitched together a patchwork of coverage. One school secretary said her family of five was covered by three policies - hers, her husband's and her ex-husband's.
Such arrangements mean added paperwork, guilt over the fact that children have uneven benefits and fear that one misstep could unravel everything.
"I don't know what I would do if my ex-husband got laid off," said one employee, whose two children are covered under their father's policy.
Hall, the high school secretary, arranged to have her college-age daughter covered by her ex-husband's policy.
"That really helps because I can barely afford to pay for single coverage," she said. "I can't imagine being without insurance, and can't imagine paying more for it."
`Working for insurance'
Rising insurance costs have cut the take-home pay of school bus drivers by 25 percent over the last three years. This group has been hit hardest because drivers work part-time and because they missed out on the 5 percent pay boost that was tied to state retirement benefits.
Debra Meeks began looking for work five years ago so her husband could start his own excavation/hauling business.
The bus driving job meant flexible hours and enabled her to enroll herself, her husband and two sons under the school system's Blue Cross/Blue Shield policy.
The coverage kept the family's medical bills manageable last year, when her husband was severely burned in a boating accident and she and one of her sons each broke ankles in separate accidents.
But Meeks fears that if premiums continue to rise, her take-home pay will shrink to nothing, even if she continues to put in extra hours driving athletic teams in the evenings.
Bus drivers have coined a term - "working for insurance." Women who once took jobs outside the home to supplement their husbands' pay are increasingly looking for work that pays little more than health insurance and the peace of mind it brings.
"I went to work for the insurance, not knowing at the time that it would all come out of my check," Meeks said. "It just keeps going up and up and your pay don't go nowhere."