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BY MENGHAN JIN

In print | Published October 7, 2010 — Updated October 11, 2010 16:47

If Kae Kalwaic gets a gash on her leg, she doesn’t want to weigh the costs of going to a clinic instead of the ER. But with recent changes to faculty and staff benefits, it’s a trade-off workers on this campus may have to consider.

An increase in co-pays, the specified rate paid to the medical provider at the time of service, including a new co-pay of $150 per emergency room visit, is just one of several controversial changes in faculty and staff benefits made last year by the Ad Hoc Financial Planning Group and the Faculty/Staff Benefits Committee that will save the college approximately $400,000 a year.

“Last year, the whole campus participated in a big process to try to find some ways to cut the budget,” said Melanie Young, vice president for human resources. “The Faculty/Staff Benefits Committee . . . was asked to look at our benefits and try to figure out, ‘could we save any money?’ And so . . . we found that there were a couple areas where our benefits were very much higher than the marketplace.”

Emerging from the board of manager’s approval of the $8 million budget adjustment last December, those areas include a change in co-pay rates of in-patient hospitalization, generic prescription drugs and ER visits, a redesign of available health plans and a new base plan in which the college decreased its financial contribution, a phasing out of the benefit bank, a structure unique to Swarthmore that, according to Young, costs the college an unnecessary amount of money; and a tuition grant reduction in which less financial benefits are available for employees to send their children to college.

The changes in health care benefits have generated the most conversation in the community. For some staff members, these changes were seen as unreasonable. “One of the last things that should be cut . . . are health care benefits; that to me should be almost sacrosanct,” said Kalwaic, administrative assistant in the education department.

However, for Diane Collings, associate registrar, the changes in health care benefits are just something to get used to. “I think we’re kind of stuck with a certain plan and paying the co-pay that they demand from us,” she said.

Starting this academic year, faculty and staff must now pay $100 in co-pay per day of inpatient hospitalization with a cap of five co-pays per admission as well as a co-pay of $10 for generic prescription drugs. Emergency room co-pay rates have also increased $100 from last year for those employees on the HMO plan.

“The ER co-pay is intended to help decrease non-emergency visits, which are a factor in the high costs of health care, although I worry about the unintended negative consequences it could have on folks. This is one we will have to watch carefully,” Young said in an e-mail.

The second change in health care benefits for faculty and staff — the restructuring of health plans — saw a switch of base plans, which determines the financial contribution from the college, from the Keystone Point of Service (KPOS) plan to the new Keystone HMO 15 plan.

While the KPOS plan offered coverage outside of the Keystone network, the HMO 15 plan will ultimately save the College around $362,000 annually, according to the Ad Hoc Group’s December 2009 Budget Adjustment Plan.

“We had as our base plan last year a plan that was relatively . . . better than average. . . . and we found that nobody was using that; they were pretty much staying in the network,” Young said. “And so we thought, ‘Why are we paying extra for that if people aren’t using it? Let’s switch to the mirror image of it just without the network.’ And that was an HMO plan.”

Apart from the KPOS and the Keystone HMO plans, employees can also choose a third alternative, the Personal Choice plan (PPO), which would give them more freedom in selecting health care services in and out of the Keystone network. But those employees who decide to choose the more expensive KPOS and Personal Choice plans will have to pay a significantly higher monthly rate than that of the HMO base plan.

“All these things are eating into what I think would be an optimum health care plan,” Kalwaic said. “I would like to see the college commit to their employees, especially when it comes to health care, and provide the highest level of coverage.”

Ted Fernald, professor of linguistics, sees these changes in a different light. “Clearly people in the administration want to do a good job; nobody wants to give us bad health care,” he said.

The remaining two changes in faculty and staff benefits — the gradual termination of the benefit bank and the reduction of tuition grants — have also generated a mixed response from faculty and staff.

Adopted in 1985, the benefit bank offers cash benefits only to certain employees who don’t need health insurance coverage from the College or have single employee-only coverage. “If you look at it from an equity perspective, then does it really make sense that I make $2,000 more than you a year, simply because I don’t need the college’s health care?” Young asked.

“We decided, and it was difficult and controversial, that . . . it was an extra amount of money that the college was spending that was really much more generous than what most employers do,” she said. To cushion the effects of the reduction, the phasing out of the benefit bank is expected to be complete in 2015.

Rick Valelly ’75, associate professor of political science, was not surprised by this change. “We are … literally the only college to have a benefit bank,” he said. “The phase out of the benefit bank was bound to happen because we were just sticking out like a sore thumb.”

Last December, the board of managers also approved a reduction of tuition benefits for children of college employees who decided to go to college from 42% to 40%, potentially saving the college around $38,000 dollars a year.

“Tuition is out of hand in this country; basically I’m committed to paying for my children’s education,” Fernald said. Though Fernald will be experiencing these benefit changes first-hand in the next couple years, he understands their necessity.

“It’s true that with difficult financial times, there are difficult decisions to make. There were lots of discussion held over the last couple years . . . and there was a lot of thinking about where to make certain cuts. So it’s not like it was a huge surprise,” he said. “It’s America; you get what we’ve got. It’s better than some places; it’s clearly worse than other places.”

Adam Bortner ’12, member of Swarthmore’s Labor Action Project, was concerned about the limited transparency about the change in faculty and staff benefits during several meetings held during in Spring 2010.

“It seems like the decisions were already made and that they had these meetings to kind of inform us rather than gather community input,” he said. “I got the impression that some of it was smoke and mirrors rather than transparency and openness.”

Kalwaic also encountered smoke and mirrors at the meetings. “I’m not sure that they mentioned these co-pays,” she said. “I went to the meetings, but we were so focused on the benefit bank.”

When The Phoenix first talked to Young on Monday, she made no mention of the change in co-pays.

At the meetings this past spring, Bortner also noticed another discrepancy in Swarthmore values and the benefit changes. “A lot of times, the administration would give us the line ‘Our peer institutions are doing this; therefore we have to.’ And I’ve always thought of Swarthmore College as kind of a leader, as a school that’s different, that’s not like everyone else,” he said.

No matter the fervor of responses, however, these changes in employee benefits are already established. Open Enrollment for this academic year, in which faculty and staff are required to update their insurance coverage, ended October 1st.

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