Mich. Senate Panel Votes to Change Lawmakers’ Health Care, Pay

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A Michigan state Senate panel on Tuesday voted to change health care benefits for future lawmakers when they retire.

After working six years, current lawmakers qualify to get 90 percent of their health care covered once they turn 55, which turns into supplemental coverage when they become eligible for Medicare at 65.

Bills that could be approved by the full Senate would set up a system where lawmakers elected after this year get a percentage of their health care paid for based on the number of years worked. The bills would not affect current legislators.

Future lawmakers would have to work 14 years to get the same level of coverage at 55 that current lawmakers now get in six years.

The Senate Government Operations and Reform Committee also passed a resolution calling for cutting lawmakers’ pay by 5 percent, and limiting future pay hikes to the inflation rate.

That proposal would require action by the State Officers Compensation Committee to take effect. The committee isn’t scheduled to meet until 2009, however, so the earliest lawmakers could see salary cuts is 2011. Lawmakers earn $79,650 a year, and legislative leaders make more.

Tuesday’s unanimous, bipartisan votes in committee drew criticism from Progress Michigan, a liberal-leaning group that says lifetime health care for legislators should end altogether.

“Allowing senators to keep their free lifetime health care, while everyone else is being asked to sacrifice is a slap in the face of every Michigan working family struggling to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table,” said Dan Farough, executive director of Progress Michigan.

But Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, said the bills would mirror a recently passed law that brings retired school employees’ health care coverage more in line with what retired state employees receive.

Under the change, new teachers won’t qualify for retirement health care premiums until they’ve worked 10 years, at which point 30 percent of their premiums would be covered. Teachers will then get 4 percent more of their premiums covered for every year past that.

“We did the same thing basically we did with teachers, and we think it’s fair,” Bishop said.

The Democratic-led House has sent the Senate a bill that would end health care retirement benefits for future lawmakers.

Critics, including labor union representing state workers, have noted that lawmakers aren’t doing anything to limit their own health care, just that of their successors. Farough argued that the inflation provision tucked into the resolution cutting pay actually could encourage future legislative pay raises.

The bills changing or eliminating lawmakers’ health care coverage in retirement are Senate Bills 868-69 and House Bills 4558 and 4580. The resolution calling on pay to be cut is Senate Concurrent Resolution 22.