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The public spotlight placed on their free health-care benefits has prompted several more state lawmakers to offer to pay 10 percent of the cost of the premiums costing up to $16,233 a year for family coverage.
In recent days, Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport, newly elected Sen. Roger Picard, D-Woonsocket, and Representatives Edwin Pacheco, D-Burrillville, and David Caprio, D-Narragansett, have joined the relatively small group of lawmakers already contributing voluntarily because they thought it was the right thing to do.
Including the newcomers, the number of $13,508-a-year lawmakers paying a portion of their health insurance premiums now stands at 26 of 113.
Others either get it for free, or they get a $2,002 waiver payment for giving it up.
A handful opted to return 10 percent of their waiver payments. Only two — Sen. Paul Jabour, D-Providence, and Rep. John Patrick Shanley, D-South Kingstown — said no to the free insurance and a waiver payment.
Attention turned to the lawmakers’ free health care after an hours-long debate last week, on a bill to cut $168 million out of the current-year budget, that saw lawmaker after lawmaker rise from their seats to talk about the need to “share the burden” and “share the pain.”
A key lawmaker said the House Democratic leadership was willing to attach a requirement that legislators start contributing to the health-dental and vision package, but the senators signaled they were unwilling to go along during an unannounced caucus from which the media was excluded.
According to the legislative business office known as the Joint Committee on Legislative Services (JCLS), the following lawmakers are receiving free health-care packages:
In the House: Representatives Joseph Almeida, Jon Brien, Kenneth Carter, Elaine Coderre, Arthur Corvese, Elizabeth Dennigan, John DeSimone, Grace Diaz, Robert E. Flaherty, Raymond Gallison, Al Gemma, Arthur Handy, J. Russell Jackson, Donald Lally, Jan Malik, Nicholas Mattiello, John McCauley, Joseph McNamara, William Murphy, Eileen Naughton, Peter Palumbo, Peter Petrarca, Henry Rose, William SanBento, Gregory Schadone, Joseph Scott, Agostinho F. Silva, Richard Singleton, Thomas Slater, Peter Wasylyk, Anastasia Williams and Timothy Williamson have family plans. Edith Ajello, Steven Costantino, Gordon Fox, Brian Kennedy, Peter Lewiss, David Segal and Raymond Sullivan have individual plans.
In the Senate, Stephen Alves, Leo Blais, Frank Ciccone, Daniel DaPonte, James Doyle, Hanna Gallo, Daniel Issa, Beatrice Lanzi, J. Michael Lenihan, John McBurney, Michael McCaffrey, Josh Miller, Joseph Montalbano, Paul Moura, Juan Pichardo, Leonidas Raptakis, John C. Revens Jr., Dominick Ruggerio, Susan Sosnowski, and William Walaska have family plans. Daniel Connors, Maryellen Goodwin, Charles J. Levesque and Rhoda Perry have individual plans.
Twenty-one lawmakers who do not want or need the coverage each get a $2,002 annual waiver payment for giving it up.
Those receiving the waiver payment include Senators Walter Felag, Paul Fogarty, Christopher Maselli, Harold Metts and James Sheehan; and Representatives Joseph Amaral, Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, Raymond Church, Deborah Fellela, Frank Ferri, Douglas Gablinske, Joanne Giannini, Robert Jacquard, Peter Kilmartin, Charlene Lima, Rene Menard, John Savage, Patricia Serpa, Steven Smith, Stephen Ucci and Kenneth Vaudreuil. (Savage, Smith and Fogarty decided to voluntarily forgo 10 percent of the waiver payments).
Within this group are a number of current and retired state and municipal employees, including a retired probation and parole officer, school principal, firefighter and police officer who has moved on to a new career as a lawyer.
For the record, Governor Carcieri, the retired chief executive of Cookson America, has acknowledged he, too, gets the $2,002 waiver payment because he has health insurance under his private-sector retirement package. Retired from his earlier perch as chief executive at Cookson America, Carcieri has been unwilling since taking office to disclose the size of his pension and how much — if anything — he pays for his health coverage, though he acknowledged during his 2006 reelection campaign that his Cookson pension was between $200,000 and $500,000 annually.
The numbers seem to be changing daily, but according to the JCLS those legislators voluntarily paying 10 percent of the cost of their health-care premiums include Senators Dennis Algiere, David Bates, Kevin Breene, Marc Cote, June Gibbs, Paiva Weed, Picard and John Tassoni; and Representatives Caprio, Steven Coaty, Laurence Ehrhardt, Nicholas Gorham, Bruce Long, John Loughlin, William McManus, Helio Melo, Victor Moffitt, Carol Mumford, J. Patrick O’Neill, Pacheco, Amy Rice, Susan Story, Joseph Trillo, Robert Watson and Thomas Winfield. Rep. Donna Walsh opted to pay 6 percent.
The overall taxpayer cost this year of the legislators’ health benefit program: $1,344,861. The annualized savings would be a projected $142,739 if every legislator taking the benefit contributed 10 percent of the projected $1,427,390 cost next year.
House Speaker William J. Murphy on Friday disclosed that Representative Rice, D-Portsmouth, intends to reintroduce a proposal to require 10 percent co-payments that died in committee last year.
This year, Murphy said, the Rice bill “has the support of the Democratic Leadership.” No word yet on whether the Senate, which resisted attempts to attach a legislative co-pay requirement to the $168-million mid-year budget-cutting bill will go along.
