Category Archives: Education

Credit legislators: They made the hard choices

By Steve Brawner
© 2014 by Steve Brawner Communications

Let’s give credit to Sen. Jim Hendren, Rep. Harold Copenhaver, and other legislators – not because they necessarily made the right decisions, but because they definitely made the tough ones.

Hendren, R-Gravette, and Copenhaver, D-Jonesboro, are leading a task force charged with reforming the school employee health insurance system, which is a mess. Costs are rising so fast that the Legislature twice has had to meet in special session – last year to pour money into the system as a quick fix, this past week to reduce spending. Many school employees have been paying too much for premiums and others not nearly enough. The big fear is that the system will tumble into a death spiral where, as costs rise, more and more young, healthy employees opt out, eventually leaving only older, less healthy employees in the pool. No insurance fund can survive that.

Bills passed by the Legislature this past week, as well as other actions based on recommendations by the task force, are expected to reduce a potential 35 percent premium increase into an average 3 percent increase, assuming the plans don’t change much. Significantly more work remains to stabilize the system long term.

The most noteworthy legislation removed 4,000 part-time school employees from being eligible for school health insurance.

That’s a tough one. As Rep. Sue Scott, R-Rogers, pointed out in a hearing, these employees include bus drivers and cafeteria workers – the people who offer some students their first smile of the day, or who serve an extra helping of lunch to those they know don’t get fed enough at home. Some of these employees work for schools precisely because it offers them the best health insurance they can get.

Hendren and Copenhaver explained their reasoning during the lead-in to the session. Cuts had to be made in order to prevent premium increases for everyone. Part-timers rarely receive health insurance benefits in the private sector, and schools should be no different. Because school districts are saving money on insurance, they will have more flexibility in giving some employees full-time responsibilities, thereby making them eligible. Those who lose their insurance will have other options, including the “private” one passed by the Legislature that uses Medicaid dollars to buy insurance for low-income Arkansans.

Opponents countered that the private option’s future remains in doubt. It passed with zero Senate votes to spare in the fiscal session earlier this year. Two additional opponents of the program have already won Republican Party primaries and are headed to the Senate. Hendren himself has consistently voted against it.

Removing part-time employees from eligibility was not an ideal solution, and there may or may not have been a better way, but at least lawmakers acted, and for that they deserve praise. In crafting this and other parts of the legislation, they made hard choices about how to responsibly allocate finite resources for a critical need, rather than putting off those choices and letting others deal with the consequences. Hendren, a Republican, and Copenhaver, a Democrat, could have played partisan games with the issue. It doesn’t appear that thought ever occurred to them.

Congress, please take note.

Choices are hardest when they involve one of two scenarios. In one, the options are all so wonderful – like a menu in a good Mexican restaurant – that the mind locks up. In the other, the options are all so distasteful that it’s hard picking one over the other.

In politics, it’s usually the latter. Nobody wants to take insurance from part-time school employees, but, given the fact that school starts soon and time was limited for making more foundational changes, legislators decided it was a better bad choice than raising rates for everyone. As Copenhaver told representatives, “Some people say this is a Band-Aid. Well, I say what we did last session is a Band-Aid. We covered it up by providing funding. We have now taken that Band-Aid off, and it is somewhat painful.”

If it was the right decision, it will help stabilize the fund. If it was the wrong one, legislators can reverse course when they meet again in January. But you can’t reverse course when you’re not going anywhere. Again, Congress, please take note.

Paying for wants, not for needs

By Steve Brawner
© 2014 by Steve Brawner Communications

My wife, Melissa, matter-of-factly made this statement the other day: We have been trained to expect that our needs should be cheap or free, and our wants can be expensive.

The context was a discussion about the costs of health care, an obvious need. Americans expect insurance or the government to shoulder most of the cost of health care, employers to pay for most of the costs of insurance, and out-of-pocket expenses to be minimal. We’re outraged if a necessary minor procedure results in a bill of a few thousand dollars, but many of us will pay that same amount for vehicle accessories or for a larger house without making too much of a fuss.

Education is a need, and it’s free through the 12th grade. Teachers, a necessary profession, are expected to work pretty cheap, as are police officers and firefighters. Those aren’t luxuries, after all. Winning sports teams, however, are a want, so coaches and players are paid high salaries.

Electricity and clean water – they’re needs, and they’re cheap, considering their importance and what it takes to provide them to us. Meanwhile, many people pay as much for cable TV as those necessary utilities combined.

Gasoline is a need, too, and when the price first started rising towards $4, it sparked national outrage. How could something so necessary be so expensive? Many felt as if they were being taken advantage of. But many people will pay $4 for a soda or a beer at the ballpark or a cup of gourmet coffee.

There’s a downside when we expect our needs to be provided cheap or free: What happens when the costs rise – as with health care? Health care costs are now an unsustainable 18 percent of our national economy. One way to control those costs is to require individual consumers to pay more at the point of service so we’ll shop around for better prices or refuse unnecessary care. But that would require us to pay more for a need, which makes us uneasy.

Another challenge occurs when wants become needs, such as a college education. In the past, college was a want – an important want, but not an absolutely necessary one, which meant it was OK that it was expensive. Today a high school education is no longer enough for most professions. Most jobs of the future will require at least some post-high school education.

So what do we do now that college is a need? One solution has been to subsidize it with a want – the lottery. Who doesn’t want to win the lottery, even though it’s an inefficient way of funding scholarships that often preys on the poor or the misguided?

There are good reasons to subsidize certain needs. A free public education through the 12th grade gives all citizens, rich and poor, the chance to achieve foundational workforce and life skills. Health insurance, public and private, protects us from sudden, undeserved financial catastrophe and frees us to pursue our goals and callings.

But needs must be paid for, and ultimately, paid for by us. That 18 percent of the economy dedicated to health care comes from the taxes we pay and from the insurance fees that come from our pocketbooks and our employers’ bottom lines. If our insurance benefits were not so expensive, our salaries would be higher.

So we really do pay for needs. We just want to feel like we’re not. I’m not saying to stop all the paying, but we do need to stop all the pretending.

Health care’s PROBLEM: Americans’ health

By Steve Brawner
© 2014 by Steve Brawner Communications

Arkansas legislators are preparing to meet in special session for the second time in less than a year to discuss rising school employee health insurance rates. It’s a difficult issue, but it’s a “lowercase p problem.” The “capital P Problems” are beyond what state legislators can address by themselves.

Let’s start with the “lowercase p problem.” The cost of health insurance for school employees is rising faster than the system or many employees can afford.

In a special session last October, legislators poured $43 million in one-time money into the system and added another $36 million annually from other sources as a quick fix. They also appointed a task force chaired by Sen. Jim Hendren, R-Gravette, to craft long-term solutions.

That task force has proposed two bills for legislators to discuss for now, with more on the way sometime in the future. One would, among other changes, exclude spouses of school and state employees from coverage if they can obtain it elsewhere, as is common in the private sector. The other would exclude part-time school and state employees who work less than 30 hours. That would involve a lot of school bus drivers and cafeteria workers, and it’s more controversial, even though the practice of excluding part-timers is also common in the private sector.

Legislators will be called into special session in the next few weeks if they can arrive at consensus on at least one of the bills beforehand. Other important changes can be made administratively, such as changing the way the school employees’ super-cheap bronze plan and expensive-but-generous gold plan are structured.

Health care has become the dominant issue in the state Legislature, just as it is the most contentious one in Washington. The past two legislative sessions have centered around the debate over the state’s “private option,” which uses Obamacare dollars to buy private insurance for 150,000 Arkansans who beforehand were not quite poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. As a result of this year’s primary and runoff elections, there will be two less senators supporting it. During this past fiscal session, it passed with no Senate votes to spare.

What to do about the private option is a big concern, but it’s not one of the “capital P Problems.”

One of those is the health care system itself, over which state legislators can have only limited influence. America’s health care system, pre- and post-Obamacare, is far too expensive and doesn’t allocate its resources effectively. In many cases, it doesn’t make us healthier, and in quite a few cases, it actively makes us sicker and even kills us.

That’s a Problem. But there’s a bigger one – one that deserves not only a capital P but instead all-caps. The PROBLEM is this: America is not a healthy place, and Americans are not healthy people. Sixty-nine percent of us age 20 and above are overweight, and 35.1 percent are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Eighteen percent of children ages 6-11 are obese. More than 18 percent of adults smoke cigarettes despite all the efforts that have been made to encourage them never to start. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 9.2 percent of Americans age 12 and above in 2012 had used an illegal drug (including marijuana) or abused a psychotherapeutic medication during the past month.

The health care system does little to discourage these realities, but it is not the principal cause. Unhealthy daily habits and lifestyle choices are woven into the fabric of American life, and it’s not just what we eat, drink and smoke. Our lifestyles are both sedentary and stressful. We’re rushed much of the time, but from a seated position. Our lives are marked by excess in many areas and deficiencies in others, such as sleep, joyful time with family, and meaningful community activities. Most of us know we’re not living right just by looking in the mirror.

Health care systems can be engineered to encourage healthier behavior, but no system can free us from the consequences of our own choices. Our health care is unaffordable because our health is unaffordable. Ultimately, we are the problem with health care, and the solution must begin with us.

Arkansas Week, June 6

I appeared on AETN’s “Arkansas Week” Friday with host Steve Barnes, longtime journalist Ernie Dumas, and KUAR’s Ernie Dumas. We discussed the upcoming runoff elections, the Pryor-Cotton Senate race, state revenues and the possible upcoming special session about school employee insurance.

UA, colleges go online to avoid Kodak’s fate

By Steve Brawner

More than 350,000 Arkansans have taken some college classes but do not have a degree. That’s a business opportunity for Arkansas colleges and universities. Meanwhile, 95 out-of-state, online higher education providers offer programs to Arkansas students that have been approved by the Department of Higher Education, and that number is growing. For Arkansas colleges and universities, that’s a market threat.

How do service providers respond to opportunities and threats in a free market economy? Adapt or die.

Dr. Donald Bobbitt, president of the University of Arkansas System, told the House and Senate Education Committees Monday how his system is adapting. The eVersity program will offer degrees starting this fall that are designed to reach older Arkansans who need employment skills but not the on-campus college experience. It’s meant to fill jobs that are available right now. The approach will be systemwide and funded entirely through student tuitions.

The courses are being designed to be cheaper and more convenient than traditional on-campus classes so a mom with three kids can go back to school without leaving home. Semesters will last six weeks, and there will be eight of them a year so that older students can take one course at a time and still finish in five years. Billing will be done monthly rather than in lump sums. Credit hours will be offered to students with relevant work experience. Bobbitt said a student will be able to earn a degree from home in five years at a cost of $18,000 – maybe significantly less.

Bobbitt acknowledged that his profession hasn’t changed all that much in 1,000 years, but changes are coming now. Online college-level chemistry course experiments can be done at home with the professor checking the results on YouTube. Courses are being designed to take advantage of free online material instead of textbooks.

Offering online courses is nothing new, of course. Arkansas State’s online MBA program was ranked 14th in the country by U.S. News and World Report, while Harding University students can earn an online MBA. Arkansas Tech’s eTech program offers several associate’s, bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

eVersity’s primary market is older, nontraditional students – not students who go to college straight from high school. But those students face challenges of their own. Student debt nationally is about $1 trillion, and far too many college graduates don’t have much to show for that debt but a job at Starbuck’s. If Arkansas colleges don’t provide sufficient value, more students will do what consumers always do – purchase what they need (job skills) at a cheaper price elsewhere.

And they do have choices. As Bobbitt explained, 95 out-of-state providers deliver more than 1,200 degree programs and credentials in Arkansas. Students can earn degrees from for-profit colleges like the University of Phoenix, public universities like the University of Missouri, and private schools like Liberty University. Those schools are educating students that might have chosen Arkansas institutions, which means those institutions have to step up their games, which is good for everybody. Plus, offering online courses gives Arkansas schools a chance to reach a potential worldwide marketplace.

Interviewed in a Capitol hallway after his presentation to legislators, Bobbitt said that faculty acceptance of the new online model has varied from professor to professor, but as a rule, “They understand that we don’t want to be Kodak.” That’s a reference to the film manufacturer and developer that failed to respond to digital photography and ended up declaring for bankruptcy.

Bobbitt had used another metaphor speaking to legislators earlier. He said the UA System is trying to operate like a fast-moving yacht, not the Titanic.

It must, as must other Arkansas colleges and universities. There are many ways for Arkansas students to get across the ocean these days, and many of them don’t require leaving home.