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Somewhere
I’ve read that we have a government ‘Of the people, by the people
and FOR the people’. However I am beginning to believe that some
of those IN the government believe it should be… ‘Of the people,
by the people and for US.’
My issue this week is a practice just discovered here in the great
state of Texas. It seems the Texas legislature has had a practice
of hiring what are known as ‘ghost employees’ at rates of $100 to
$300 per month and labeling them as ‘full time’ employees which
qualifies these ‘ghost employees’ for health insurance benefits,
life insurance benefits as well as retirement benefits. All at taxpayer
expense. Your money and my money. None of the so called workers
were required to fill out any sort of time sheet or punch a time
clock as many of us ordinary people must do each and every day.
I suppose I’m being too harsh on these hard working governmental
types, after all $300 a month divided by 120 working hours only
comes out to $2.50 an hour… hardly even minimum wage. What dedication,
what loyalty. What a rip-off.
What a deal. The legislative body has set itself up to add personnel
to their payrolls at a minimum cost per month for persons who perform
little or no actual on site work but get great benefits they otherwise
could not afford. You can bet the state insurance program is one
of the best. One of the members of the legislature was interviewed
and responded by saying…. “Everyone is doing it; it isn’t like it’s
a big secret.” Well, that warms my heart, doesn’t it yours?
After the news came out, the legislatures came back and, get this,‘re-classified’
these formerly ‘full time’ workers to be now known as ‘on-call’
employees. This was explained further to the press by saying that
all of the misclassified employees were labeled as ‘full time’ as
a result of some clerical error. The ‘on-call’ classification does
not require any time sheets or clocking punching either. It makes
me wonder just how much actual work (if any) these so called ‘on
call’ people do in any given month. The pay isn’t great but the
benefits are wonderful.
Wait, that’s
not all!!!! You get more!!!!
The speaker of the house initiated a policy that ANY member of the
legislature who had grown unmarried children of any age could still
be on the health and medical policy of the legislature. It seems
the speaker had a 32 year old unmarried daughter who needed to be
covered and so she was. Nice deal for them…not for you and me.
My problem with this is simple…these kinds of deals are not, I repeat
NOT available to the average citizen. For example, when one of my
sons got ready to go into the Navy, they found he had a hernia which
needed to be fixed before he could be accepted. We took him to a
doctor, had him operated on and off he went to basic training. He
had been out of college for about 2 months and the insurance company
was taking my premiums for his coverage. About a month after the
operation I got a bill for over $12,000 for the surgery. I spoke
to the insurance company and found out that my son was not covered
since he had ceased being a full time student. Obviously the speaker
of the Texas house doesn’t have that problem since his unmarried
daughter would be eligible for coverage no matter what her age.
As long as she remained unmarried she could be covered until she
was ninety…..or whatever.
Now the other issue here is that in order for this to happen and
these conditions to be acceptable the insurance company has to approve
of the practice. If you and I own a company and we want to provide
health insurance for our employees, we can only cover full time
(40 hours per week or more) type employees. I’ve had grown men come
to me and practically beg me to put their wives or children on our
program since they could not afford an individual health insurance
policy. They would even offer to pay the premiums. I’ve had relatives
want to do the same thing. My heart went out to them, but if our
carrier caught us putting some ‘ghost’ employee on our plan then
they could and would drop our coverage in a heartbeat. Not so in
the case of the Texas legislature, they can insure any unmarried
child or any so called ‘part time or on call’ employee that they
wish, all at taxpayers expense. Think there is any kind of a deal
between the insurance companies and the legislature? Perish the
thought.
What a crock…..but then it just goes back to a government of the
people, by the people and for THEM..doesn’t it?
This kind of stuff turns my stomach and is so wrong.
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