Retired teachers seek to close benefit gap

AUGUSTA – More than 200 retired teachers from every county in Maine turned out at the State House on Wednesday in support of legislation that would increase the portion of their health insurance premium the state picks up.

The state now pays 30 percent of the retired teachers’ health premiums. In contrast, the state covers 100 percent of health benefits for retired state government employees. The teachers want to move closer to equality with the state employees.

A bill submitted by Sen. Mary Cathcart, D-Orono, would have the state’s share of retired educators’ health coverage rise from 30 percent to 40 percent Jan. 1, and then step up to 50 percent in January 2003.

For Phil Gonyar, who taught history in Bangor for 16 years in the 1960s and ’70s, any increased state help would be appreciated.

“It would leave me more money to spend on other necessities,” Gonyar, who retired from teaching in 1991, said after a hearing on Cathcart’s measure before the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee.

Given an 18 percent hike in his health insurance premiums last year and facing a 20.5 percent jump come July, Gonyar said, “Health insurance is taking more and more of my discretionary funds.”

If the state went to a 50 percent share July 1, the same day the 20.5 percent health insurance jump takes affect, Catherine Sullivan would save $63.40.

Sullivan was a teacher and administrator at Westbrook High School for more than 30 years. Now the president of the Maine Retired Teachers Association, she now pays $184 while the state pays $80 of her monthly health insurance premium.

In July, she will begin paying $222 after the 20.5 percent increase pushes the monthly premium up to $317.

The issue for Sullivan is equality with state employees.

“We’re all under the Maine State Retirement System,” she pointed out. “We pay the same contribution to get into it. The one disparate benefit is in health care.”

According to Cathcart, “The treatment of retired teachers is the most blatant inequality in the entire state retirement system.”

However, she did not propose having the state cover the health benefits in full for them because of the cost, she said. “I didn’t think there was a chance of getting 100 percent, and I’m a pragmatist.”

Going to a 50 percent share would cost the state an additional $3.4 million a year beginning in the 2002-2003 fiscal year.

A total of 8,344 teachers would be affected by the proposal, according to Steve Crouse of the Maine Education Association, the statewide teachers union.

He explained that in 1967, the state began to cover 100 percent of retired state employees’ health coverage.

It took 20 years for the state to pick up anything for retired teachers. In 1987, the state began to cover 10 percent of their health premiums, Crouse said, ratcheting up its share to 25 percent by 1990. Then in 1998, the Legislature bumped it up again, to the current 30 percent.

While the effort has support among legislative leaders – Senate President Michael Michaud, D-East Millinocket, and House Speaker Michael Saxl, D-Portland, have submitted similar legislation – the fate of Cathcart’s bill is uncertain due to the current deadlock over the state budget.