Nevertheless, the fact that the other state data you used do not include the largest groups, school and municipal employees, in their pools, and that you made no comparison of benefits, premiums or co pays, makes it difficult to ascribe much meaning to your report’s findings.

I suspect pooling will produce cost savings and I can suport the concept so long as it includes all public employees, including legislative, executive and judicial staff and office holders and that the promises made to retirees regarding level of coverage, made for years in lieu of pay raises, are protected. We may have to pay a bit more as individuals. I can buy that. But I would like to see data that analyzes what is actually being proposed before reaching any conclusion rather than reaching a conclusion, as you did months ago, without any data to support it.

Your two stories today:

One of the stories says the Michigan plan must be MANDATORY because “voluntary plans don’t work.”

BUT … your “analysis” that purports to show costs in other states with statewide plans are lower looked at California (a VOLUNTARY plan, where premiums have increased 60 percent since 2003), Massachusetts, a VOLUNTARY plan, Washington, a VOLUNTARY plan, and Wisconsin, a VOLUNTARY plan.

Now the North Carolina statewide plan that you highlight is mandatory, of course the Legislature there in the past few weeks passed a $1 billion tax increase in part to fund a $250 deficit in the plan (and another $400 million is going to be needed to plug another gaping hole in the plan next year). And the NC plan’s executive director was recently fired for mismanagement and incompetence. So that state’s mandatory plan “works?”

Don’t know much about Georgia, which is also a mandatory plan. Maybe that’s the one that works?

Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio