Good news for unified city/police health plan
After six years of feuding, the Police Department and City Hall are closer than ever to endorsing a unified health insurance plan that could save money for Kansas City taxpayers. This is an encouraging development.
At a meeting scheduled today, high-ranking city and police officials will discuss what a consolidated system could look like. “I really think this can get done,” Mayor Sly James said Thursday.
In fact, the mayor told The Star, he texted his scheduler on Tuesday to start setting up today’s meeting after he attended a police board session where chief Darryl Forté and board president Pat McInerney indicated they were eager to make progress on the health insurance issue.
A unified plan would be a remarkable achievement, not just from a fiscal standpoint but also because it could help bridge the gulf of distrust between City Hall and police.
More heartening news came Thursday, when Forté acknowledged in an interview: “The Police Department has been viewed as arrogant for years. On this insurance, we need to figure out not if we’re going to do it but how we’re going to do it.”
He added: “We have to be reasonable. We have to be flexible.”
That certainly would help, because potential resolutions have come and gone before.
Just last week, city officials were stunned to learn that the police in 2011 had decided to spend $330,000 of taxpayer funds to subsidize lower health care premiums for the department’s employees. And City Manager Troy Schulte — weary of the long battle — announced he would support $5 million in raises for the police in the next budget only if they became part of a joint health insurance plan.
This week Schulte said in an email that — under a unified system — police employees likely would pay a little more for prescriptions and hospitalizations than they do now. But he added that many officers without a lot of those expenses “would actually save money because their total monthly premiums would decline.”
McInerney says he wants police to get something out of the deal, too, especially if they have to give up what police insurance consultant Bob Charlesworth conceded this week is a “high benefit plan.”
If the city really can deliver lower total monthly premiums for cops, that’s something to promote. Getting access to $5 million for raises would be a victory for the department, too. Finally, taxpayers would win when the unified plan saves public funds in the long run.
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