A Vision for Boston:
Questions for the 2009 Mayoral Candidates

Day 7: Health insurance costs

What steps would you take to further control Boston's health insurance costs for active employees and retirees?

Response from Councilor Flaherty:

With personnel costs continuing to rise, it is more important than ever that the city take sweeping action to reduce health care expenses and implement commonsense solutions. As Mayor, I intend to foster consensus among unions to enroll the city’s employees in the state’s Group Insurance Commission (GIC) as a way to achieve meaningful savings seen in Springfield and Quincy. For city retirees, we need to better inform them about what federal benefits they are entitled to and adopt the local option to enroll all new retirees into Medicare as a way to offset city costs while ensuring retirees’ access to quality health care coverage. With these win-win solutions, taxpayers will no longer have to foot the city’s expensive health care bills and city employees and retirees will have access to quality healthinsurance.

While creating an OPEB trust fund is a positive step, Boston needs to improve its commitment to expanding this essential fund and reducing its overall liability at the same time. Growing and sustaining this fund must be a priority and should be achieved by cutting spending elsewhere — health care costs, for example — and redirecting savings into this fund.