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Gov. Jim Justice Calls for Action To Avoid Higher PEIA Costs

WHEELING — West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice is asking the state Public Employees Insurance Agency board to raise the wage tiers PEIA uses to determine premiums so state employees receiving raises earlier this year won’t see higher insurance costs.

Teachers across West Virginia walked out of their classrooms for nine school days last winter protesting increasing healthcare costs and below average salaries.

The strike ended after Justice asked the PEIA board to freeze premiums at their current rates through June 2019 while a solution to higher costs was determined. Teachers also received an across the board raise of $2,020 per year; and other state employees, $2,160.

The wage increase actually bumped many state employees into the next higher PEIA bracket, still increasing their healthcare costs.

For most employees, the increase would have been about $50 to $55 a month for PEIA Plan A, according to West Virginia Education Association President Dale Lee.

Justice on Monday asked the PEIA board to raise its wage tiers by $2,700 to negate any premium increase for state employees. He said about 14,000 state workers would have been moved to a higher tier because of their pay raise.

PEIA Director Ted Cheatham said the increase in the tiers would be “revenue neutral” and not come at any additional costs to the state.

Justice had appointed a PEIA task force to hold meetings across the state this spring. On Monday, he asked members to gather all data from these meetings, study them, and come up with a “long-term solution to PEIA.

“We think we can do this, and it would not cost us much at all,” Justice said. “The long and short of it, is the task force has done good work.

“I do believe at the end of the day… we are going to have to have some additional participation from the state, but we can win this battle,” he said.

He suggested the state might have to contribute as much as $21million annually to PEIA “along with other ideas” to achieve a solution.

West Virginia Education Association President Dale Lee, a member of the task force, said the main concern expressed during the meetings was that wage increases gained would “would be eaten up by the raise in premiums.”

“No one should see their premiums or out of pocket costs go up because of the pay raise,” Lee said. “That was the concern we heard on the task force… We brought this to the governor, who said, ‘Yeah, a freeze is a freeze.’

“This is just another component in the state’s investment in education,” he said. “You don’t make an investment then take away from that with a raise in premiums.”

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