City should lower worker health insurance subsidy

Last Tuesday, the Naperville City Council had one of its customary long discussions that came to no solution. No big surprise there.

But Tuesday night's palaver was not only something the council actually needed to discuss at length, but it also tied in to the major national topic of the past year -- health care and paying for it.

The council was looking at a proposal to renew city employees' health care policy. With about 3,600 employees and a $15 million plus contract, this is no small deal.

During the course of the discussion, it came out that the city was picking up 90 percent of the cost of the insurance, with the employees' share being a maximum of 10 percent.

The report the council had detailing health care indicated that the maximum of 10 percent figure is in several of the contracts the city has with its various unions, and that in the interest of parity it was extended to non-union employees as well.

That seems only fair.

However, the 10 percent figure needs to be questioned -- and to their credit, at least a couple of the council members did.

Almost anyone who works in the private sector and carries health insurance is paying a lot more than 10 percent of the cost.

More likely, employees would carry from 20 to 40 percent of the cost. It would take a very generous employer -- and how many employers can afford to be generous these days? -- to subsidize more than 80 percent.

Then there are increasing numbers of businesses, particularly smaller ones, that don't offer health insurance to their employees at any price.

But one of the things about being a municipality is that you don't have to compete on the cost of doing business with anyone else, so you can treat your well-paid and well-pensioned employees with health care subsidized at a higher rate than most businesses and know that the taxpayers will keep picking up the tab.

Don't misunderstand me here.

I think city employees in general do an exemplary job, and their professionalism contributes greatly to the standard of living of residents.

But it's not as if they do it for free. And with a country mired deeply in recession and people even in affluent Naperville losing their jobs or having their pay cut, it's just a bit galling to ponder that public employees are paying less for health care benefits than most of the rest of us.

I know that once something is in a union contract, it might as well be carved in stone for generations to come. But the city ought to try to get this changed, because it simply isn't fair to taxpayers.