Photo courtesy ARHME.
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"We expected some form of increase. But not 49 per cent," said George Bravanec, board chair of the very young but growing Association of Retired Houston Municipal Employees (ARHME) in response to news that Mayor Annise Parker has unilaterally raised health insurance premiums for retirees under age 65 by approximately that amount.
Parker said, "This is based strictly on the cost increases for our health benefits. We took the entire coverage pool and then determined what portion of the claims are due to active employees, what portion are attributed to retires under 65 and what portion are due to retirees over 65. I made the decision that each group would pay proportionate amounts."
Bravenec stopped short of calling Parker's budget strategy discriminatory, but said, "It has also been pointed out even by the city's HR department that much of this is due to the fact that many employees nearing retirement with nagging health issues have made the decision to wait until after they are retired and have more time on their hands to have these issues taken care of. The health problems didn't just suddenly appear in the first two years following retirement. Now we are being penalized for this."
"We don't want a one year fix for this," Bravenec said, "that's what we got last year from Mayor White and here we are again. There is a better way to fix this going forward."
"The issue with double-digit increases in retiree health insurance premiums began when Mayor White decided to segment active employees and retirees into separate groups for health insurance cost purposes." Bravenec explained. "Prior to this time, active employees and retirees were considered as a single group in the aggregate for insurance purposes. The city needs to return to this method to determine insurance rates for actives and retirees. This would result in spreading the cost among a much larger group for significantly less impact and not place today's actives in the same position when they retire."
Bravanec said he understands that both Harris County and METRO use this method to determine insurance premium rates for their employees and retirees. "We would not be asking active employees to do anything that we hadn't done, he said, "which was having the premiums we paid while active employees based on this larger pool of members that included retirees."
"She apparently has the authority to do this and we understand the need for the city to balance it's books," Bravanec responded when asked if Parker has the authority to unilaterally change the premium prices paid by any employee group. He added that some members of the City Council seemed surprised that they were not allowed to vote on the issue. "But we believe that hitting one group, retirees under 65, with a 49 per cent increase in our insurance premiums is excessive."
Parker has agreed to meet with ARHME on the issue.
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