EDITORIAL: Shut down flailing Teachers Health Trust

The collapsing Teachers Health Trust, the union-mismanaged health insurance for Clark County School District educators and their dependents, finally is about to die. But the Clark County Education Association is dictating the terms of the plan's costly rebirth, an arrangement akin to allowing a captain who sank his own ship to pick who pilots a bigger, newer vessel.

As reported by the Review-Journal's Neal Morton, the Clark County School Board took no action Thursday on a union proposal to hand over management of the trust to local firm WellHealth and a third-party administrator, effective Jan. 1.

Although taxpayers have provided the union with more than $100 million per year to administer the teachers' plan and pay claims, the trust has consistently run a deficit that is projected to grow to more than $20 million next year. The trust's viability has worsened even though teachers' out-of-pocket costs have been increased dramatically.

But in addition to hand-picking the trust's successor, the union wants something else: an additional $11 million per year for WellPoint.

Considering the union won't let the district or the public look at the trust's books, how can anyone trust the CCEA to select a replacement provider? Indeed, will the union really have no role in overseeing teacher health benefits if it decides who provides them?

It's important to recall comments John Vellardita, executive director of the Clark County Education Association, made last month to KTNV-TV, Channel 13, about the union's views on insurance providers: "During this time, there will be hardship. … But the alternative was to have a greater hardship, and that is to turn over our health insurance to a for-profit entity."

Unlike the union, for-profit insurers have expertise in their business and run them well enough to actually stay in business.

The union provided the School Board with very little information about its proposed WellPoint transition, which would reduce the teachers' provider network from about 5,800 to about 5,200. And WellPoint representatives struggled to answer questions about premiums and potential savings, saying their responses would depend on how much money WellPoint gets from the district.

This is no way to handle one of the largest expenses of the largest government employer in Nevada. This is insane.

If the school district can't straighten out teacher health care, it will make attracting and retaining good educators even harder. Shutting down the trust and getting the union out of teacher health care is imperative. Teachers already are leaving their union in droves, but more clearly need to follow suit. Trustees should let the trust fail rather than allow it to survive under the union's terms. Then put teacher health benefits out to bid and have elected trustees, not the union, select the contract.