Gov. Deval Patrick successfully tweaked the Legislature’s municipal health care reform package to buttress his claim that Massachusetts is demanding $100 million in givebacks from public sector unions in a collaborative manner.
As expected, the four “refinements” proposed by Patrick were approved by the Legislature quickly, allowing municipalities to set in motion a process that will let them adjust copays and deductibles on union health plans without going through collective bargaining.
Patrick, a Democrat, has gone to great lengths to distinguish what Massachusetts is doing from what is being done in states like Wisconsin and Ohio, where Republican governors led a full-out assault on all facets of collective bargaining by public sector unions. Patrick insists the Massachusetts approach offers meaningful savings for municipalities on health care costs while giving public sector unions a meaningful voice in the process.
“There’s a right way and a wrong way to do this. We’ve done this with labor rather than to labor,” he said.
Patrick says public sector labor leaders understand changes were necessary. “They’re not always joyous about it, but they understand,” he said.
Paul Toner, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, says unions will retain a strong role in negotiating health care benefits and costs. “Is this the way we would have done it?” he asked. “Not exactly.” But he said the Massachusetts approach is far different from what’s happened in places like Wisconsin and Ohio.
Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, which represents businesses, said only one of the four changes proposed by the governor will affect the amount of savings municipalities can expect to realize under health reform..
“These amendments don’t affect the fundamental reform,” he said, adding that the governor pushed for them to gain union support for the approach. “It’s a subtlety, but it’s an important subtlety for the governor,” he said.
Widmer agreed with Patrick that Massachusetts’ approach is different from what’s happened in other states. On a scale of 1 to 100, he said the Wisconsin change stripping collective bargaining rights across the board would be viewed as 100. By contrast, the Massachusetts approach limiting health care collective bargaining rights would be only in the single digits, he said.
Homepage photo by Ben Timmins
