What with all the talk of health insurance reform, I decided to do a simple calculation:
Average teacher salary in Massachusetts: 56000
Average annual family health insurance premium: 12600
Say the average town pays 75 % of the premium and the
teacher pays the other 25 %, that means the difference between what the town pays (teacher salary + .75 x insurance premiums) and the teacher takes home (salary - .25 x insurance premiums) is 20%. I realize this number may be too low since insurance is more expensive in MA than the average state, so I ran the numbers with the insurance offered by my employer and came up with 26 percent. This doesn't even include co pays and other out of pocket expenses.
This means, that for every dollar the towns of Massachusetts pay for their teachers, a quarter goes out for health insurance premiums. For comparison, the average teacher only pays about a dime of every salary dollar in taxes!
Since part of the cost in paid by the employer and part by the employee - the pain is shared, but the money was spent! If you don't think health insurance in America is in a crisis, then wake up!
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