A battle is brewing over proposed increases in health care premiums for public workers. A coalition of over a dozen unions brought close to 1,000 demonstrators to the State House Tuesday, representing hundreds of thousands of public workers, including over 100,000 teachers. A state health board is scheduled to vote Wednesday on rate increases of more than 20% for many of them.
The state insists health care costs are up across the board, across the country. But some lawmakers, who say they were blindsided by this proposed increase, suggest the administration could do more to help soften the blow.
“My greatest concern is that the bill will get passed down to boards of education, municipalities, counties, other levels of government, and the impact to the public employee, an impact to that infrastructure — if in fact they can’t pay the bill — they will turn to taxpayers to raise those sums of money to cover those rising costs,” said Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex).
