Health insurance costs continue to rise at a rate well above both overall inflation and wage growth. Across our schools, education support professionals like bus drivers, custodians, paras, and foodservice workers are sharing stories of shrinking paychecks; some even reporting no take-home pay at all, as premium increases outpace what they earn.
At the same time, education workers are often required to pay higher premiums, either in total dollars or as a percentage of their income, than their licensed counterparts. This imbalance highlights a fundamentally inequitable system that places an undue burden on the workers who make our schools happen.
This is why we are advocating for a statewide health insurance pool, an approach designed to bring education workers together to increase purchasing power, stabilize costs, and ensure more equitable access to quality, affordable coverage. By pooling resources across districts and roles, we can build a system that works better for everyone and puts workers first.
The Minnesota health insurance system for schools is inefficient and wasteful.
• Over 500 educational districts in Minnesota are all navigating a broken system full of unnecessary expenses and challenges, leading to inefficiency and waste.
Our large pool solution:
- Create one large, statewide pool for all school employees and eliminate waste and inefficiency.
- Set required minimum employer contribution levels: 95% for single and 85% for family (locals could still bargain for higher levels).
- Win state funding to begin to address the health care affordability crisis and provide the benefits our members deserve while making Minnesota a desirable destination for education professionals.
- Increase our bargaining power with insurance companies and health care providers.
Why is a larger pool of people good for health insurance? A larger insurance pool creates:
- Increased purchasing and bargaining power for the state.
More stability and better predictability.
- When risk is spread out over a larger group, it reduces extreme premium level changes.
Efficiency in management resulting in cost savings.
- No need for district-level brokers and third-party administrators (saving millions of dollars a year).
- Fewer district resources used (district staff freed from most related processes). • Large pool reserves can soften year-to-year changes, creating more consistency