| I thought Andy Dillon joined the Republican Party yesterday when I heard the news. But as I thought it about, his remarkable proposal to group all Michigan state employees, including local municipal and teachers, into one insurance pool with the same insurance choices, could rationally fit into several political paradigms - liberal or conservative. Regardless, Andy Dillon stepped out on to a political ledge - and the MEA (Michigan Education Association) is trying to blast him off. Peter Luke covers the basics of the story here, although we don't have alot of details (the devil is in the details, and this isn't a full endorsement of the Dillon idea until he does more than show us press releases). But when the MEA criticizes an idea as a "government expansion," you know something mighty odd is going on. The Michigan Education Association blasted the proposal. The union's insurance arm, the Michigan Education Special Services Association, which covers more than half of the teachers in Michigan, would have to compete with other insurers in a new health care program administered in Lansing. "This is a massive expansion of government at a time when we can't even get the budget balanced," said MEA spokesman Doug Pratt. "These savings aren't here and the taxpayers shouldn't fall for it. Why would public school employees trust the health of their families to a state bureaucracy in Lansing?"
Dang. The MEA and MESSA almost sound like Republicans there, and its in that comment that one can hoist the entire "national health care movement" on its own petards. Imagine if the MEA had spent its millions last year attacking national health care because it didn't "trust the health of ..." anyone to the bureaucracy. There's a contradiction brewing up in there somewhere. Maybe the MEA wants teachers to have better health care than, say, firefighters, or certainly the police officers that Granholm wants to whack. But if you're a true egalitarian, why would teachers deserve better care than anyone. Its in this context that Democrats should abandon the MEA on their own philosophical grounds - despites the odds being against so many of them biting the benefactor's hand that lavishly feeds them. But conservatives can get behind a public health care pooling, too. It makes fiscal sense. Once you accept the notion that government is an employer - at least for necessary government (obviously there's much work to be done there) - and that employers should and do competitively offer insurance (of course, why should they offer any in the future Obama-care potentiality?) - then doing it in the most efficient way seems logical. And common-sense tells you that a larger pool gets you a better price - with few or no "losers". Conservatives and conservative groups have been proposing similar ideas for school insurance for a long-time - altough none that are perhaps as expansive to all public employees as Dillon's idea. Why should teachers be upset if they are getting reasonable insurance and the state is saving a buck? Of course, their union leaders might not like it because MESSA is a source of private economic and political power, and its profits grease a whole bunch of chains. Chains that a Democrat - Andy Dillion - might actually break if he can survive the beating he's about to take. And for that, he'll get a rare applause from this corner. |
