“The number one thing we had to address was state health insurance”

Chief Financial Officer Amy Burgess told the School Board during a finance workshop last week. Like many school boards (and state municipalities) across the country, the Pickens Board is straining to tighten its belt to meet the latest round of health insurance mandates, the unfurling tendrils of the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act (Obama care). Changes in health insurance programs due to this legislation, passed two years ago this month, have been incremental. However, the latest changes are proving to be particularly heavy-handed.

Although health insurance increases were not the focus of the workshop, the topic seemed to infect most other budget items. Burgess explained the situation. The increase for non-certified employees, under the business operations sections, is $150 a month per employee. Later, in an email to FYN, Burgess noted the budgeted total, annual cost of health insurance for non-certified employees.

“The total cost for non-certified staff insurance at the proposed rates for FY13,”

she stated,

“is approximately $1.9 million annually.”

When asked about a similar and possible increase in health insurance cost for certified employees, Burgess said she has no indication that cost will increase for certified employees. However, Burgess added, rates can changes at any time. Her words, here, remind us of Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s method of,

“We have to pass the bill to know what’s in it,”

quipped now famously two years ago when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obama care) was signed by President Obama. With this, the haunting question for county school boards and municipalities is: what other unfunded mandates will fall upon already financially burdened local government entities? Can local school boards expect health insurance increases for certified employees as well as non-certified?

Recently, school boards and other government organizations have received health insurance information mainly regarding cost increases. Do they know, though, what they are paying for? Do they know what is in these health policies? Now that the (Obama care) bill has been passed, do they know what is in it, as Pelosi says? According to Burgess and another local superintendent, the answer is no, or at least, not yet. Mrs. Burgess listed the different types of plans the district offers: HMO, HRA, and HDHP. She described these plans as wellness and standard plans that are offered by two different companies.

“We will not have another open enrollment until October 2012,”

she explained,

“So I do not know if the plans will change until then.”

She also said the district does not know what the plans cover until shortly before enrollment.

Over the past few months, the Affordable Care Act has not only caused financial frictions with citizens, but moral frictions with religious organizations, via the Health and Human Services Mandate, which states that even religious organizations, like Catholic Hospitals and Universities, are required to provide coverage for contraception, sterilization and abortifacient drugs (drugs that can cause abortions), violating religious conscience. Shepherded by Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has lead the effort to protect the conscience of religious morality and has called on the Federal Government, at very minimum to rescind the HHS mandate.

Georgia is one of 26 states with pending lawsuits against the Federal Government regarding The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) on the grounds of the unconstitutionality of the legislation. Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens was present in Washington this week to hear the first three days of the oral arguments on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

“The lawsuit brought by Georgia and 25 other states is appropriate at this time,”

Olens said in a statement yesterday,

“and we need not wait until 2014 when the penalties mandated by the President’s federal healthcare plan begin to take effect. The issues at stake are too significant to delay a decision from our Nation’s highest Court.”

On Tuesday, the arguments dealt primarily with the individual mandate aspect of the legislation, which requires every U.S. citizen to purchase. Responding to the day’s arguments, Olens said,

“If the individual mandate, the linchpin of the law, is not stricken, there are no conceivable limits on federal power. The idea that the federal government can compel individuals to purchase a product is a radical one and is completely at odds with the Constitution and principle of federalism.”

Tomorrow is the final day of oral arguments in lawsuits against the legislation.