Washington State Wire has a good article by Erik Smith today on K-12 employee health care. As he notes, the state auditor recently released a report on the subject (the executive summary is here).

State employees get their health insurance through the Public Employees Benefits Board (PEBB); school districts may participate in the PEBB plans, but most choose not to.  In fact, according the to report, only two percent of active school employees were enrolled in a PEBB plan in 2009-10.  Instead, employees are spread among “1,000 separate benefits-funding pools that pay for more than 200 different medical plans offered through 10 different insurance companies.”

The auditor found that the system could be streamlined, coverage levels standardized, and costs reduced–“changes that, depending on how they are structured, could save up to $180 million per biennium–enough for salaries and benefits for about 1,000 teachers.”

One of the opportunities for improvement the auditor identifies is to restructure the health benefits system, by creating “a separate, statewide, self-funded program with its own governing board.”  Bringing all school employees under such a program could save up to $90 million a year.

We made a similar recommendation in the Thrive Washington paper on state health care spending:  Bring K-12 employees health coverage under the PEBB or require school districts to purchase health care as a group.