Health care plan to cut state deficit

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Gov. Jennifer Granholm announced Friday that she will encourage public university employees to participate in a new cost-effective health care plan.

However, it still is unknown whether the plan could affect MSU faculty and staff.

Details of the health care plan, which is expected to reduce the cost of
health insurance for newly hired state employees by 21.3 percent, have not yet been released, Granholm’s spokeswoman, Liz Boyd, said in an e-mail.

The health care plan is part of Granholm’s effort to streamline government and eliminate the state’s projected $1.7 billion deficit for the 2011 fiscal year.

“Government cannot afford to be all things to all people but must focus on the things that matter most — job creation, education and providing critical services to those most in need,” Granholm said in a statement.

“We need to trade in our 1960s model state government for a new, sleeker, smaller state government designed for the 21st century.”

University Committee on Faculty Affairs, or UCFA, Chairwoman Deborah Moriarty said she did not know whether Granholm’s proposals regarding health care would affect recently proposed changes to reduce the MSU’s health care costs.

UCFA presented a set of recommendations to reduce the university’s health care costs by 10 percent, or $11 million, at a January Faculty Council meeting.

Included in the recommendations was a switch from MSU’s current health care provider and the creation of an MSU-provided health care option.

Under the recommendations, MSU faculty members would move from the Physicians Health Plan, or PHP, to Blue Care Network.

Moriarty said the governor’s plan has not yet entered into the university’s health care discussions, and officials will wait to hear more about it before taking it into consideration.

The governor’s plan and how it might apply to MSU likely will come up within UCFA’s health care task force, she said.

Granholm also announced she will encourage 7,000 eligible state employees and 39,000 eligible public school employees to retire.

Senate Republicans announced a plan earlier in January to save the state between $2.24 billion and $2.6 billion with reforms and cuts, including a 5 percent pay cut to all state employees, including MSU faculty and staff.

Matt Marsden, a spokesman for Sen. Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, said if reforms are going to be made, they must total $1.7 billion and completely eliminate the deficit.

“We support the fact that the governor has decided to look at some serious reforms,” he said. “We are happy to work with her and look at what she proposed.”

The governor also proposed Friday an elimination of lifetime health care benefits for all state lawmakers.

“Government reform starts with making sure that legislators and other elected officials lead by example and share in the sacrifice being asked of the people of Michigan,” House Speaker Andy Dillon, D-Redford Township, said in a statement Friday. “The governor’s proposal acknowledges that
business as usual is not working.”

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