Who is more conservative?
Not sure who is more conservative. What I do know is that Texas active and retired teachers and their families are outraged over the increase in healthcare premiums and deductibles while non-teacher employees continue to have gold-plated insurance coverage at no or very little cost.
Paxton’s Republican opponent has promised to equalize healthcare benefits between state employees and teachers.
Texas teachers are getting hosed because state employees write the legislation and rules that have exempted themselves from the increased costs that have been forced on teachers.
I am generally opposed to public employee unions, but Texas teachers cannot be criticized if the organize over this piss-poor treatment.
The teachers don’t think they should exempt from some increases in costs. They just want to be treated the same as other state employees.
My wife is a retired educator and have had significant increases in costs and lower benefits in each of the past three years. This year, our premium has more than doubled. On top of that, our deductible has increased 50% and maximum out of pocket has gone from $4,400 to $11,300. Retired state employees pay nothing. How can anyone think that is fair.
There was a time when teachers had the same plan as state employees, but the legislature spun offf the teacher and retired teacher plans into a self-funding entity; and they did it because they knew state healthcare costs were going to increase dramatically, but the state government leaders decided to screw over the teachers and exempt themselves.