Health-y-Insurance

A few employees could face as different as 24 unpaid furlough days during the next two years. Every staff likely will receive no worth-of-living adjustment, plus could have a scheduled pay enhance revoked.

But there’s one place the governor won’t go, one cut he won’t propose: He won’t ask state staff to contribute to their Health insurance.

It’s not up for negotiation, as far as Kulongoski is concerned.

“He’s already asking persons workers to act a lot supplementary with under,” the governor’s spokeswoman Anna Richter Taylor said. “He’s not willing to take that next step. Here’s only so much you might ask citizens to sacrifice.”

Oregon state workers benefit from a little of the basic Health benefits of any people workers in the nation. They pay no premium for their insurance. Full-time staff pay no deductible.

It’s a benefit they’ve earned through years of sacrifice and negotiation, union officials say. During the years, state staff have agreed to small wage increases or no increases at every to protect their Health benefits.

“We put our families plus our Health ahead of the disposable income in our paychecks, year after year,” said Ed Hershey, the spokesman for Service workers International Union Local 503. “The last thing that anyone should be doing currently as we begin to expand Health care is to take it away from persons who include it.”

Health insurance for state staff takes a big bite out of the state financial plan, about $1.3 billion out of the projected $14.8 billion funds for 2009-2011, according to the Citizens workers’ Benefit Board.

The state has budgeted about $12,800 per employee on normal to pay for Health benefits this year, said PEBB spokeswoman Ingrid Norberg.

Republicans argue that it’s a prime place to institute budget cuts.

“Paying for 100 percent of the Health nursing costs of state workers is not a sustainable path,” said Rep. Ron Maurer, R-Grants Pass. “We lack to change it.”