|
New Associate Membership Program
The Salt Lake Police Association has decided to start an Associate Membership program. The program will be for non police members from all over the state. Any person part of the URS System is eligible to join. The purpose of this program is to provide a statewide group people can join so they can take part in an affordable health care program. So to all of those who have joined and to all of those who will join, WELCOME. The associate membership program will allow our association to grow into a Statewide organization. The issues we deal with in Salt Lake City are not very different than the issues anywhere else in the state. We will be able to work together as we address our collective concerns. Salt Lake City was one of the last agencies in the state to offer any type of retirement health cared program. In August of 2015, Salt Lake City canceled this program. As an association we decided to find a program to replace the one Salt Lake City discontinued. Once we found a program we realized lack of health care was a statewide problem, so we decided to offer it statewide. We also took it one step further and decided to offer it to all employees in the state who are currently part of the URS system. THIS IS NOT A URS (Utah Retirement System) PROGRAM, THIS IS A SALT LAKE POLICE ASSOCIATION PROGRAM, however, if you are part of the URS system, you qualify. There has been some confusion so I wanted to make that clear.
The program we have started offering is Liberty Health Care. Liberty Health Care is a Health Care Program, not and Insurance Company. What does that mean to you, because you need insurance. Think I of it like a Credit Union. A Credit Union is not a bank, but to the customer you can't tell the difference. Liberty Health Care is owned by the customers, just like a Credit Union. Banks and Insurance Companies are owned by corporations. Being owned by the members allows them to keep their costs extremely low, which in turn allow them to keep their rates even lower. That all translates to super low health care expenses. Because of the structure of this group, you will also be exempt from the ACA (Affordable Care Act) regulations. Liberty is not part of any Network. Some have pointed to this as a negative, but what does this really mean? You can go anywhere and Liberty will take care of it if the procedure is covered under your plan. You are not restricted as to where you want to go. Liberty will work with any doctor or hospital, what other program can say that? What is the cost? Super low, compared to any other program under the ACA. A "empty nester" couple for example may pay around $1000 a month with a $5000 to $7000 deductible before qualifying for a 80/20% plan with an ACA program. Under the Liberty plan, you would pay $299 a month with a $1000 out of pocket amount and 100% coverage after that. We have a single widower father who was paying well over $1000 a month for him and his 2 daughters, he is now only paying $349 a month. That's enough for a house or car payment each month.
When we go up on the Hill and speak with legislators about retirement or when we speak with City officials about wages, one common theme we are hearing is, there is no reason to change anything because turn over is so low, it's not a problem. What they are not talking about is why is turnover so low. As we speak to people, we have found, a large percentage of people who can retire don't retire because of health care. $1000 a month with super high deductible means most of the retirement check each month will go to health care and that's if you retire when you are healthy. They feel trapped, well now they don't need to feel trapped. Retirement just became affordable.
What does this mean for the Police Association? We will be able to have a voice all across the state in several ways. We will be able to expand our charitable programs. We would like to partner with several children and women programs. We have always assisted in finding officers across Salt Lake County to donate their time to help out with Shop with a Cop. We have donated thousands of dollars to the program to help pay for gift cards for the children to use. We have expanded to helping with staffing a Back to School program in the summer helping children who have had a negative interaction with the Police. These names come from a DCFS (Division of Child and Family Services) liaison. We would like to work on programs to help with Children shoes. Programs to help abused and victimized women's groups. This program will allow us to expand our organization to include almost every possible working group into one organization. This will include not only police officers, but fire fighters, teachers, office workers, grounds keepers, maintenance workers, you name it, if you work for a governmental agency, you can qualify for our program. Including every work group all across the state, will allow us to have a stronger voice when speaking with legislators. We will have members in every constituency across the state. We will not only have a stronger voice, we will have a more inclusive voice as we ask questions related to laws which effect our membership on the Hill.
Michael Millard, Presdient
|
