Latest / The SEANC View / Ask Us Anything Edition: Budget Stalemate, Health Benefits, and Holiday Pay

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Ask Us Anything Edition: Budget Stalemate, Health Benefits, and Holiday Pay · The SEANC View

• 0:00
  Hello, everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Scenic View podcast,
• 0:04
  the only podcast for state employee and retiree issues, our new tagline.
• 0:09
  This is the Christmas week episode of the podcast. We got some awesome questions
• 0:15
  from our listeners we want to run through. Let's get to the episode. So,
• 0:30
  Okay. Like I said, Christmas is coming up.
• 0:34
  Are you guys excited about the pending holiday? Always. And now with grandbabies?
• 0:39
  Oh, it's so much better. Christmas is magnificent.
• 0:41
  Yeah. Whenever I started, when I had kids, I mean, you always hear that before
• 0:46
  you have kids, but then it is true. It's way better when you have kids. It is.
• 0:49
  Truly the magic is there. The Christmas magic. Yeah.
• 0:53
  Until they get like 13 and they want expenses.
• 0:57
  My mom's trying to find the magic again of being in an empty nest household.
• 1:02
  And so she's been playing a bunch of Christmas movies to keep herself in the
• 1:06
  spirit until me and my brother come home for the holidays.
• 1:09
  Your brother is older than you, right? Yeah, he's two years older than me.
• 1:13
  So next step is she starts mentioning.
• 1:15
  Yeah, then you get the grandbabies and it'll be even better.
• 1:19
  She's happy with grand dogs right now. There you go. She's happy with that.
• 1:22
  Well, we thought it would be a cool episode to just hear from our members and
• 1:26
  get some questions from you guys.
• 1:29
  We tend to come up with our own topics, and we just want to make sure we got
• 1:32
  our hand on the pulse of our membership.
• 1:34
  And so we ask on social media for you to submit some questions to us,
• 1:38
  and we'll spend some time with them. As rapid as we can be with them.
• 1:41
  So I'll be the Meet the Press Tim Russert of the program, and I'll ask you guys
• 1:46
  the questions. First question is submitted by Anna, and she wants to know,
• 1:50
  is there any advocacy going on for reinstating health insurance in retirement?
• 1:55
  Has there been any discussion on reinstating this for people hired after January 2021?
• 2:01
  That is such a good question, because that obviously took away a benefit that
• 2:05
  was important to recruiting state employees. And we still...
• 2:09
  Have a crisis as far as staffing goes in this state.
• 2:13
  And yeah, so that's always part of our conversations. You know,
• 2:16
  it's not happening right this minute.
• 2:18
  Obviously, not much of anything is happening right this minute.
• 2:20
  But yeah, that's something that we still talk about and bringing that back in
• 2:24
  order to recruit good people to come work for the state.
• 2:27
  But there's no appetite for it at this time, right? Not at this time. Yeah.
• 2:31
  It is a huge asset, especially, I mean, we still hear people,
• 2:36
  oh, you have retirement health insurance.
• 2:39
  You know, that's why you go to work for the state.
• 2:42
  And, you know, we fought that back. There were several efforts made to end health
• 2:46
  care at retirement. You know, we fought it back for a long time, but it happened.
• 2:50
  Listening to what Suzanne said, which is all on the nose, but they have,
• 2:55
  it seems, in the General Assembly, two choices.
• 2:58
  One is pay more so that you can compete with the private sector,
• 3:02
  or two is make sure you put enough money in the health plan,
• 3:05
  or better yet, make the health plan, be transparent about what they're paying
• 3:09
  so that we can bring the costs of the plan down.
• 3:13
  So that you can offer that. If you can't offer that benefit,
• 3:16
  which is pretty critical to hiring, especially younger people who you need to
• 3:20
  give a reason to come into state government, you're going to have to pay them a lot more.
• 3:24
  So it's penny wise, pound foolish not to do something. And everything always
• 3:29
  comes back down to transparency. It does.
• 3:31
  Always. You know, they also have a problem with retaining younger workers because
• 3:36
  a lot of them stay two, three, five years and, you know, decide they want to
• 3:40
  do something else. And it seems like it would be a big benefit to keep people around.
• 3:45
  Well, that was if you had a conversation with a younger employee that you should
• 3:49
  stick around, you know, because when you retire at 55, you're going to have
• 3:54
  coverage. Yeah. The rest of us don't.
• 3:57
  Yeah, that's correct. The rest of us don't have that coverage.
• 3:59
  Most of us do not have that in the world.
• 4:00
  And that's the argument that ultimately prevailed when they took it away at the General Assembly.
• 4:05
  Most people don't have this Well, that's kind of the point Because most people
• 4:09
  make more for the same job That part was ignored But the most part,
• 4:15
  people don't have it part That's what they clung to,
• 4:18
  So, yeah. Good question, though. Yeah, that's a great one.
• 4:21
  And I know that at the time, our kind of argument was, well,
• 4:24
  if you have to take this away, you need to do something about how much dependent
• 4:28
  care is for the state health plan.
• 4:31
  Is there any movement on that, like making that any cheaper or not really?
• 4:35
  It's not much better. There's always these kind of little attempts at it,
• 4:40
  but it's not meaningfully changed.
• 4:43
  And, again, I'm going to be a broken record because we need our members to understand
• 4:49
  this issue enough that when they call the legislature, they hammer it, hammer it, hammer it.
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  Because the bottom line is you also can't bring down dependent coverage until
• 4:59
  you're not overpaying for the coverage.
• 5:01
  You can't not overpay for the coverage until you have to tell the public what
• 5:05
  you're paying for the coverage. Right.
• 5:08
  So a lot of our questions submitted deal with one particular subject,
• 5:12
  and that is the budget or lack thereof.
• 5:14
  So that question kind of stuck out to me as something different.
• 5:18
  And then this one does as well.
• 5:20
  Paulette asks, why did we stop getting early pay in December?
• 5:26
  Last week's episode of the podcast went into a little more detail about that. But just to recap.
• 5:33
  The state made the decision, and that's made at the executive branch level,
• 5:38
  that Office of State Budget and Management would not pay early in December the way it had, gosh.
• 5:45
  As long as I can remember. Well, yeah, my memory of state government's about
• 5:49
  25 years, so it's at least that long that they paid early in December so folks
• 5:54
  could do their Christmas, and they didn't get paid again until the end of January as scheduled.
• 5:58
  Credit Union stepped in, did some short-term loans that were,
• 6:03
  there were rave reviews from folks about that.
• 6:05
  And last week, go back to last week's episode and you will hear the Credit Union came on the podcast.
• 6:10
  And it was a great episode talking about why they did it and what they've got
• 6:15
  going this year because they're doing it again this year.
• 6:18
  Yeah. Folks appreciate that. I mean, if you've worked somewhere 25 years and
• 6:23
  you've planned your whole budget around getting paid earlier in December.
• 6:27
  Yeah, and it's not necessarily mismanagement of your funds. It's just that it's
• 6:32
  the holidays, and everybody wants to have a holiday with their family,
• 6:37
  and so they needed their paycheck early to make that happen.
• 6:41
  January instead of August would have been good.
• 6:43
  And we tried. We asked if it could be extended until this year.
• 6:48
  No, no, I meant if they were going to do that in December of 24.
• 6:51
  Tell people early. Yeah, give them a heads up.
• 6:54
  But there's still going to be people who wouldn't have heard it,
• 6:56
  And I'm sure that happened last year All of a sudden last minute They realized
• 7:00
  they weren't getting paid early And that kind of hurts my heart I can say though
• 7:05
  that When you get paid early like that.
• 7:08
  January is very long. Super long. But a lot of ramen. But state employees are
• 7:13
  accustomed to that as well.
• 7:15
  Yeah, yeah. Gets a lot of deals on beans and ramen, like you said.
• 7:20
  So basically, a lot of these other questions, like I said, are about the budget.
• 7:24
  So I'll kind of maybe broaden all of them and kind of we'll work through them.
• 7:29
  First off, I guess, why is there not a budget? And we've talked about that every week on here.
• 7:33
  Obviously, there's just not any common ground at this point,
• 7:37
  right? They just can't reach a compromise.
• 7:40
  And it's two sides of the same party, so it's even more complicated, right?
• 7:44
  And that baffles everybody. How can they have a supermajority in the General
• 7:48
  Assembly and not come to terms on a budget? Yeah.
• 7:51
  So, yeah, good question. And it's corner office stuff right now.
• 7:56
  Like, we say a lot inside baseball.
• 7:59
  But, yeah, the tax package is the big holdup is our understanding,
• 8:03
  and there is no agreement on that. There was a session on the 15th,
• 8:07
  but it was a skeletal session. No business.
• 8:10
  I will say there's a lot of talk about it right now. There's a lot.
• 8:14
  Even John Locke Foundation came out, and there's another opinion piece in News
• 8:19
  Notes Over, which we talked about a few weeks ago.
• 8:22
  There's a new wrinkle coming out in these discussions, though.
• 8:26
  State Lines had a very interesting discussion where several people said,
• 8:30
  hey, that's incorrect that we don't have a budget.
• 8:34
  We still have a budget because the way our state is set up, unlike the federal
• 8:38
  government, where if they don't pass one that year, you're talking shutdown.
• 8:42
  We don't face shutdown because the current budget remains in effect.
• 8:46
  But if you did not change your personal budget at home, but your premium on
• 8:53
  your health care went up at work and your gas prices went up and so forth,
• 8:58
  your budget is going to run out. Yeah. And that's what we're facing.
• 9:03
  So technically, yes.
• 9:06
  But I feel like, oh, goodness, that's such semantics, because the bottom line
• 9:09
  is we do not have a budget in that we have not addressed.
• 9:13
  Okay, there's all these huge changes that have happened in terms of Medicaid funding,
• 9:19
  in terms of what we're bringing in in taxes, and what local governments are
• 9:25
  facing in terms of changes from the federal government and how that's going
• 9:29
  to lean in on the General Assembly.
• 9:32
  There's obviously what we care about, state employees, retirees who are sitting there with nothing.
• 9:38
  So when we say there's no budget, we're saying the needs of the state and particularly
• 9:44
  of state employees and retirees remain unaddressed.
• 9:49
  Yeah. And that kind of that is another question that came up was,
• 9:53
  is there are there like legal ramifications of them not passing a budget?
• 9:57
  I guess not really. Right. There is statute that it would be continuing.
• 10:00
  In 2016, the General Assembly voted for whatever budget was in place.
• 10:06
  If they didn't pass a budget by June 30th, beginning of the next fiscal year,
• 10:11
  then the budget that they had would continue.
• 10:13
  So the state would continue to run, like Artis just said, on whatever it had in that current budget.
• 10:19
  There was a time when we had to wait for continuing resolution,
• 10:22
  CR as we called it, to have the provisions in it to continue.
• 10:26
  But in 2016, that was changed, so they don't have to go back and do a continuing resolution.
• 10:31
  Government just continues. That being said, I think it also takes off some of
• 10:36
  the pressure of having to get the budget done.
• 10:38
  And we also need to point out there have been a few adjustments for things the
• 10:43
  General Assembly wanted to adjust.
• 10:45
  And by adjust, I mean spend some money where they wanted to on many budgets. Yeah.
• 10:51
  State employees. We were not a mini budget. And retirees just haven't been in that.
• 10:55
  Yeah. Are there any steps that state employees and retirees can take to encourage
• 11:00
  an end of year bonus or to encourage them to get to work and actually do a budget?
• 11:06
  So I don't think that a bonus or anything like that is going to happen.
• 11:10
  I don't feel hopeful about that by the end of the year.
• 11:13
  But you guys hear us say this all the time. Don't ever stop calling,
• 11:17
  emailing, reaching out to your legislators.
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  If you can meet them out in the district where you
• 11:22
  live for a cup of coffee and talk to you know build
• 11:25
  those relationships but don't stop calling even if
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  you feel like you're not getting a response you are making an impact
• 11:31
  when you call their office you know can I give a couple of examples of that
• 11:34
  please we talked about on this podcast months ago when the shrimp what I call
• 11:40
  shrimp oh yeah folks who are commercial fishermen in the shrimp industry raised
• 11:46
  hell from beneath the earth's surface. They did. For days.
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  Right. When their livelihood was going to be impacted by decisions of the General Assembly.
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  And they prevailed. They prevailed because they came down there en masse.
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  They communicated. They were outside the building. Yeah, they were outside the
• 12:02
  building. They were on the phone.
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  Of course, we have to watch it because when state employees gather outside the
• 12:07
  building, they say, well, we don't need them.
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  Well, we needed the shrimpers. They were outside the building.
• 12:12
  But anyway, I digress. The shrimpers did it. They won. Yay.
• 12:16
  But now we've got this other issue. On the 10th,
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  Governor Stein came out and said, look, because we need this huge amount of
• 12:25
  money just to keep paying the bills for Medicaid, we informed doctors,
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  we're going to have to cut the reimbursement rate we're giving them by a little bit.
• 12:35
  And doctors raised hell from beneath the earth's surface. And so on December
• 12:39
  10th, the governor held a press conference, said, look, we're going to put back
• 12:43
  the rates. We're not going to reduce what we're paying to these doctors at all.
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  We're going to go back to what we were paying them before we reduced it in September. So pressure works.
• 12:56
  Enough pressure works. Now, granted, the medical community has more sway with
• 13:01
  their pressure because that's a lot.
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  It's a high dollar. Ton of money. Ton of money industry.
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  But the shrimpers did it, the good old-fashioned, gut through it and get out
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  there and do it kind of way.
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  So those are two examples.
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  One extraordinarily well-organized grassroots, one extraordinarily well-funded. Yeah.
• 13:21
  So that's what you can do. You can be like the shrimpers or the medical complex,
• 13:26
  industrial complex, and put your pressure on. Don't let up.
• 13:30
  And, you know, it's election season coming up, right? And these representatives
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  and senators will be out in their districts.
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  And a lot of them have got primaries now. And they're all going to get questions
• 13:40
  about crazy national issues that don't matter on the state level.
• 13:44
  Why not be the state employee there that's like, hey, what about this budget?
• 13:48
  Where's my rates? And if you want to look up to figure out if you don't know
• 13:52
  your district that you're in, the Scenic website can help you out there.
• 13:56
  Yeah, we have a lookup page. We have an action page.
• 14:00
  Mind your legislator. Yeah. We're here to help you, too. W.scenic.org. Yeah.
• 14:05
  I'm always a fan of the good old-fashioned just raise hell outside, like the shrimpers did.
• 14:11
  Well, again, it's perceived differently.
• 14:13
  Yeah. I mean, for right or wrong, it is. And we've lived it.
• 14:17
  We've been there when legislators have looked out the window and said,
• 14:21
  well, there's exactly how many we don't need of state employees because we're
• 14:26
  functioning just fine, apparently.
• 14:28
  And I am, in fact, imitating no one who's currently in the General Assembly.
• 14:34
  If you know, you know. That's the thing. It's disappointing to think about it
• 14:38
  that way as when it's people who are working hard and don't work for the state.
• 14:43
  They're like, OK, OK, sure, whatever.
• 14:45
  Just leave us alone, please. We'll give you what you want.
• 14:48
  But it's when people who are actually working for the state and doing things
• 14:51
  for people across the state and making sure that the state can continue to run,
• 14:56
  they're like, never mind, we don't even need you.
• 14:59
  Yeah. It's disrespectful. They don't have a, yeah, like you don't have a voice.
• 15:03
  Yeah. I kind of want to put this in there, too. We have quite a number of retirees in Scenic.
• 15:10
  Retirees, you know how short-staffed the state is right now and that folks can't
• 15:15
  get off work to come and advocate.
• 15:16
  But there are lots of retirees who know exactly what employees are going through.
• 15:22
  And you could be a crucial part of action.
• 15:25
  And you can't lay off a retiree, right? Yeah.
• 15:29
  So. Be a voice for the people who can't be a voice for themselves.
• 15:32
  As well as for yourself. Yeah. We've been down there when that was a threat, too.
• 15:37
  If you were protesting something and you had your prison uniform on. That's right. Yeah.
• 15:41
  That's right. So it's a real, you know, kind of catch 22, like Sammy was saying, you know. Yeah.
• 15:47
  I thought this question was pretty interesting. We'll get off the budget for a second.
• 15:51
  So this person, Christy, her question is kind of long, so I'll kind of try to summarize it.
• 15:56
  But the gist of it is in 20 years, since people are quitting or working five
• 16:03
  to 10 years and not retiring, is that going to have an effect on the retirement system?
• 16:08
  And if you will there be more? I don't know how.
• 16:11
  OK, I get what you're saying. So somebody's working five, 10 years leaving.
• 16:15
  And so they never take their retirement. They get whatever money they put in
• 16:20
  the system, first of all. OK.
• 16:22
  They don't get interest, the system made on that money, but they get whatever they put into it.
• 16:27
  But as that person rises up, if they stay, they're in a perfect world,
• 16:33
  in a normal functioning world.
• 16:35
  You would get raises every year. So your salary is raising that way,
• 16:38
  even if you don't move up through promotion or anything like that.
• 16:43
  But people tend to move up in a number of ways.
• 16:46
  Their salary moves up. That 6% they put from their employee paycheck every month increases.
• 16:53
  The longer they're there, and that's going in the system.
• 16:56
  That won't be happening. So I think the net effects on the system are not good.
• 17:03
  I mean, okay, that person's not going to take retirement, but you're replacing that person.
• 17:08
  Yeah, at a lower level, too, with lower funding coming in. Right.
• 17:12
  That's a complicated question, Christy. Good job.
• 17:14
  But not even in all cases are they replacing it. In some cases,
• 17:18
  they're freezing the positions and saying, eh, never mind. I guess we don't need that person.
• 17:21
  We can have someone else do more. And if you look at what your average retiree
• 17:26
  gets in terms of retirement, but you look at the turnover costs that we have
• 17:31
  from vacancies when people leave.
• 17:33
  Yeah. You could take that turnover cost for one year and invest that stuff,
• 17:39
  and 30 years later, you can afford for all these people to retire plus some. Yeah.
• 17:44
  And she asked it in the context of, like, why are retention rates so low?
• 17:49
  So that's another question.
• 17:52
  It's always pay when you ask that question. It's pay. It's pay.
• 17:55
  And benefits, though, too, right? I mean. Yes.
• 17:58
  Yeah. I guess it's all a package, but your package is not. Because when you
• 18:01
  came to work for the States, you knew you weren't going to get rich,
• 18:03
  but you had stable benefits.
• 18:05
  But you can also see it as a, from my perspective as a young person, I like to travel.
• 18:10
  When you're working so much that you don't even get to take the vacation time
• 18:14
  that you have, you get fed up and you get to the point where you're saying the
• 18:18
  benefits that I'm getting and the lack of raises that I'm getting aren't worth it.
• 18:23
  And some of these jobs are so, are very dangerous. Yeah.
• 18:27
  So many of them. Especially when you're considered the pay. Like, yeah, I wouldn't.
• 18:32
  Yeah, but it does. I mean, Suzanne's right. When we ask members,
• 18:36
  okay, other than pay, because the General Assembly asks us all the time.
• 18:40
  I mean, other than pay, what can we do to make your people happy?
• 18:44
  I mean, it's always just pay them.
• 18:46
  Yeah, I mean, and a lot of members of the General Assembly run businesses.
• 18:51
  I don't know. What do your employees want other than their paycheck to move
• 18:54
  at least somewhat with inflation?
• 18:57
  Of course, that's what employees anywhere want and need, to be clear. That's crazy.
• 19:02
  Like, I mean, not. They need to be able to afford where they live,
• 19:05
  especially with so many state employees in Wake County.
• 19:09
  They can't even afford to live in Wake County and they're having to commute
• 19:12
  from very far away just to go to work.
• 19:15
  Hard times for sure. But that's why you work for pay. You know, you pay.
• 19:20
  Yeah. It's very simple. So you can get paid to live. Yeah.
• 19:25
  So this question, we'll go back to a kind of a budget question here.
• 19:28
  How was the $3.3 billion surplus from 2023 spent?
• 19:33
  So I had to go back and look at this one a little bit. The state ran a $3.3
• 19:37
  billion surplus from fiscal year 2425.
• 19:40
  The state collected more than $34 billion in taxes and spent $31 billion on
• 19:45
  schools, universities, prisons, health care, and any number of general fund services.
• 19:50
  The state also, keep this in mind, also spends billions from the Highway Trust
• 19:54
  Fund and receipt funded services.
• 19:56
  So that's not, the general fund was not the only source of funding.
• 20:00
  At the beginning of fiscal year 2024-25, the state had a credit balance of about
• 20:06
  $2 billion in the general fund.
• 20:08
  By June 30th, it was up to more than $5 billion.
• 20:12
  While approximately $891 million remains in the fund, the short answer is the
• 20:18
  surplus was spent on Hurricane Helene relief.
• 20:21
  I can't let this go without pointing something out. So Suzanne told you how it was spent.
• 20:28
  Let's talk about how that 2023 surplus got there, at least $1.2 billion of it.
• 20:36
  The Office of State Budget Management, OSBM, reported back then much of that
• 20:45
  was reversions back to the general fund of money the agencies didn't spend.
• 20:50
  And they admitted much of that was driven by what they called historically high vacancy rates.
• 20:59
  So employees doing the job of more than themselves because there were so many
• 21:04
  vacancies where they worked meant that $1.2 billion went right back to the state.
• 21:08
  And then the state did not spend that $1.2 billion on the workers.
• 21:13
  That needs to be pointed out. I remember at that time, we talked about,
• 21:18
  well, that money needs to go to the employees. You would think.
• 21:21
  Yeah. You would think. That's where it came from, yeah. Yeah.
• 21:24
  But, you know, it's a big deal for the state to pat itself on the back over
• 21:30
  how much is in the rainy day fund.
• 21:32
  But when it reverts because you aren't paying enough to keep your people and
• 21:37
  you have all these vacancies, spend the money that reverted to pay enough to fill those jobs.
• 21:45
  These jobs weren't not filled because nobody was advertising.
• 21:49
  They weren't filled because nobody wanted the job.
• 21:52
  Because pay. Because pay. Let's move to the retirees.
• 21:56
  I have a question here, and we talked about this a couple weeks ago when it
• 22:00
  was announced that the system has made $14 billion this year.
• 22:03
  If they're making such high profits, why are they not giving colas?
• 22:08
  We hear that same question, and we talked about it a couple weeks ago as well.
• 22:12
  So the retirement system, I say this often, just trying to keep everybody educated,
• 22:17
  the retirement system is actually built to produce enough money from investment
• 22:21
  returns to pay for a true COLA.
• 22:25
  We shouldn't even have to be asking the General Assembly for those funds if
• 22:29
  it was all in a perfect world, as Artis said.
• 22:32
  The system's investments would produce enough money for us to pay a COLA.
• 22:36
  The $14 billion that Treasurer Briner and his investment authority have made
• 22:43
  happen, which is great, $14 billion,
• 22:45
  he is going to use towards the unfunded liability of the plan,
• 22:49
  which that is important, but it's $14 billion.
• 22:52
  It costs about $600 million for 1% of a true COLA.
• 22:57
  So 2% would be a little bit over a billion. Yeah.
• 23:01
  And there's $14 billion. So, yeah.
• 23:04
  So, like I said, we do have a big election coming up in 2026.
• 23:08
  So maybe we should talk a little bit about IMPAC and about how IMPAC operates
• 23:13
  and what we'll be doing in the coming year.
• 23:15
  I guess the first question here is, who decides who we endorse?
• 23:19
  Yeah, so IMPAC is the Employees Political Action Committee. It's the political arm of Scenic.
• 23:25
  IMPAC is made up of members from 18 areas in the state.
• 23:30
  And endorsements are made by this group. They hold interviews in their areas
• 23:35
  and in the districts. They interview and vet out candidates,
• 23:38
  and then they come together for a state meeting and they finalize their endorsements.
• 23:43
  So every endorsement that is made,
• 23:47
  is made by your fellow Scenic members, your fellow state employees.
• 23:51
  And Scenic has, we're very representative of the state across the board.
• 23:56
  So there's never much of a lean in either direction. This past election season,
• 24:01
  it was pretty much right down the middle, how many Republicans they endorsed
• 24:05
  and how many Democrats they endorsed.
• 24:07
  But it is an internal vetting process that's done by members.
• 24:11
  And if you don't like who's being endorsed, you can get involved with some of the interviews.
• 24:16
  Yeah, and get involved in impact and give to impact. And give to impact.
• 24:20
  And how do they decide how much money to give in each race?
• 24:25
  Yeah, just through discussion. Okay. Is it based on, like, importance of race? Sometimes.
• 24:30
  And there's a maximum amount of money that we can give, right?
• 24:34
  It's $6,800 in the primary and $6,800 in the general.
• 24:37
  And I think that goes up, like, every cycle, doesn't it? Yep.
• 24:41
  I'll tell you what, though. So I've been hearing so much out there from,
• 24:44
  we need to not endorse anybody, nobody.
• 24:47
  And that's what happens when you get shut out. Like we start hearing that.
• 24:52
  Historically, that's just true. It's a lot of conversation around that right now.
• 24:56
  It's also a thing of not getting the job done, of not just state employees and
• 25:02
  retirees not feeling valued by these people, but it's also a thing of they had one job, get a budget.
• 25:07
  And there's a lot of talk. I mean, this is kind of veering off impact, but maybe not.
• 25:12
  There's a lot of talk coming out of the house about the importance of teacher
• 25:16
  raises, how they're ready to hop on it and do the right thing by teachers. Awesome.
• 25:21
  We support that a hundred percent, but it's missing a lot of the point,
• 25:26
  which is it's not just teachers where we have trouble keeping people.
• 25:30
  It's not just teachers where we are shamefully underpaying. It's most state jobs.
• 25:36
  And so, and then you've got your retirees who, you know,
• 25:40
  spent their whole career watching decades and decades and decades of retirees
• 25:45
  doing their time, doing it for less money than in the private sector,
• 25:49
  but then they knew there would be a retirement with COLAS.
• 25:53
  Modest retirement, modest COLAS, but at least it would move a little bit so
• 25:57
  you could survive. Somewhat keep up with it.
• 26:00
  And that's not happening for anybody. So I worry that teachers are obviously,
• 26:05
  if you throw that word out, it's going to poll better than state employee. Yeah.
• 26:10
  But also, if you're just looking at schools, yeah, we need our teachers and
• 26:14
  God knows we don't pay them enough.
• 26:16
  But the same thing applies to everybody else, all the support staff in these
• 26:21
  schools, the administrative staff, and nothing against principals,
• 26:24
  but I'm not talking about principals when I say administrative staff.
• 26:28
  I'm talking about the people that know Johnny's got to leave early today.
• 26:31
  Well, I think that kind of sums up all the questions I have.
• 26:35
  Do you guys have any that you want to bring up?
• 26:38
  I had one more. I had a question about GLP-1 drugs.
• 26:41
  Yes. You know, the state health plan stopped covering those because it was 10
• 26:45
  percent of the pharmaceutical claims that the plan had.
• 26:49
  It was not sustainable to keep covering those medications.
• 26:53
  However, there are some negotiations in the work. So stay tuned that maybe sometime
• 26:58
  in 2026, we will see some coverage in some form come back for those drugs.
• 27:04
  So that's a little bit of good news for. Yeah. And I think Thomas Friedman talked
• 27:08
  about that at our last town hall a little bit.
• 27:11
  I saw that Pfizer's drug was approved this week, and it's possibly going to be cheaper.
• 27:18
  Well, there's some things moving in that area of pharmaceuticals right now, for sure.
• 27:24
  Okay. We also get a lot of questions about Aetna, the current third-party administrator
• 27:29
  of the plan, versus Blue Cross, the one that had been the third-party administrator forever.
• 27:34
  And a lot of people wonder, did we get a premium increase because of Aetna?
• 27:39
  You got a premium increase because Treasurer Falwell
• 27:43
  had committed to hold the line on that until he could get the legislature to
• 27:48
  let him make it a fair game where the medical industrial complex could not profit
• 27:55
  as grossly as they were doing at the expense of state employees.
• 28:00
  So he was holding the line on premiums until everybody could share in that sacrifice.
• 28:04
  And so Treasurer Falwell retired. And so, as expected, you ended up with a premium increase.
• 28:11
  So until we get a commitment that somebody's going to hold the line,
• 28:17
  for state employees in the way Treasurer Falwell did. You're going to be facing
• 28:21
  that because no one is willing to take the health care industrial complex on.
• 28:27
  The cartel is what Dale Falwell called them.
• 28:30
  You call them whatever you want, but nobody's wanting to take them on in the
• 28:34
  way that he was willing to do.
• 28:35
  It's a good way to, we always seem to work back to health care.
• 28:40
  It's always the problem. It's true because that's all we, you know,
• 28:44
  it tells you something. And when that's all you hear other than pay,
• 28:47
  that's all you hear from members. Yeah.
• 28:49
  That tells you. It's a big deal. That's the hot button. However,
• 28:52
  you said it on one of the podcasts last month, John. It's one of the biggest issues nationally.
• 28:58
  It's the hot button issue for everybody, private or public sector.
• 29:02
  It's just that we can lobby to do something about it in the public sector.
• 29:07
  And just a side note, too, if you're having some issues with Aetna,
• 29:10
  because that was a big undertaking to transition from Blue Cross Blue Shield
• 29:14
  to Aetna, and you may hit a bump in the road over a claim or something, please reach out to us.
• 29:20
  We may be able to put you in touch with someone in the plan who can help with
• 29:23
  just these speed bumps that appear to pop up in random places where people are. Yeah.
• 29:29
  And I saw a comment on a News and Observer story a few weeks back that you sent,
• 29:34
  John, on the health plan.
• 29:35
  You sent it around to us, and there was a comment, not from one of our members,
• 29:39
  I don't think, but just a random member of the public saying,
• 29:42
  I thought Aetna, when they took over from Blue Cross, part of their whole thing
• 29:46
  was they were going to bring costs down so the premiums would come down.
• 29:51
  We talked about that a while back on this podcast. That had been my understanding, too.
• 29:56
  So we'll try to get back with y'all. Maybe we can get Aetna on here to come
• 30:01
  and talk about why are we not seeing that?
• 30:04
  Because I don't know the answer to that question. I wish I did because our members do deserve that answer.
• 30:08
  So what we commit to you here today, because I thought it was a really good question.
• 30:12
  But I think you kind of do know why.
• 30:16
  Because health care is just outrageous. Well, but they're the ones that have
• 30:20
  to agree or not agree to this inflated rate the providers are asking for. Oh, yeah.
• 30:27
  So you're so would like to ask them why.
• 30:30
  Yeah. Well, put that on the calendar for next year.
• 30:34
  2026, a great year for podcast episodes from the Scenic View.
• 30:39
  Let's go to my question of the week and then we'll get out of here.
• 30:42
  These people want to get their presents. John's working.
• 30:51
  Okay, so question of the week. It is Christmas week, I guess.
• 30:54
  We've exhausted lots of topics. We've already talked about movies one year.
• 30:58
  I think this is maybe our third year. So let's go.
• 31:01
  Favorite Christmas song. I have many opinions on this, by the way,
• 31:05
  because Christmas songs are one of my favorite genres, if you will.
• 31:10
  So I like Donde Estab Santa Claus. Have you ever heard this one? I'm not sure.
• 31:16
  Oh, it's awesome. From Augie Rehost. It's like a child singing about Santa Claus, but it's in Spanish.
• 31:23
  Part of it's in Spanish, but it's just really cool.
• 31:26
  So maybe I'll splice that in here. Yeah. Everybody will know.
• 31:31
  I love your random music. My favorite is Blue Christmas by Elvis. Okay.
• 31:37
  Yeah, that's a good. And the Eagles, Please Come Home for Christmas.
• 31:40
  I love that one too. Yeah.
• 31:41
  Christmas music, period. Actually, I won't say it until I may step on someone else's. No, go ahead.
• 31:48
  I guess my traditional favorite would be White Christmas by the Drifters.
• 31:51
  Yeah. That's like the best one. That's a pretty one.
• 31:55
  Okay. What about, which one do you want to go? Go ahead.
• 31:58
  Mine's actually Sabrina Carpenter's Buy Me Presents.
• 32:02
  Oh, I have to hear this. I love it. It was on her Fruitcake Christmas album.
• 32:07
  It's been out for about two, three years now. so it's
• 32:10
  newer but i i just love it i thought
• 32:13
  it was going to be the christmas tree farm song from i mean
• 32:16
  that's also an amazing one but that's a popular one
• 32:19
  buy me presents is just catchy and it's
• 32:22
  kind of funny because she's kind of just talking about how she has a
• 32:25
  crush on santa and santa will buy her presents if another
• 32:28
  guy doesn't want to okay kind of like a new
• 32:31
  version of santa baby just like every other okay
• 32:34
  santa baby santa baby
• 32:37
  i got issues with but that's well i think all of
• 32:40
  us women what's the one that's kind of inappropriate maybe it's
• 32:43
  cold outside that's also i got issues with that song
• 32:46
  yeah it's kind of racy too yeah yeah
• 32:49
  there's quite a few songs that there's issues
• 32:53
  with them like why why is this
• 32:55
  such a popular yeah all right
• 32:59
  artists you're on the hot seat my favorite traditional one
• 33:02
  oh holy night like you didn't get better than that my
• 33:05
  favorite country one mary did
• 33:08
  you well it's not a country song but the country version kathy matea's version
• 33:12
  of mary did you know oh that's a good one and then my favorite inappropriate
• 33:15
  one not santa baby or anything like that is merry christmas from the family
• 33:20
  i knew you robert earl keen you know if i gotta go my favorite redneck yeah
• 33:24
  that's a good one if i gotta go Got run over by reindeer is pretty good.
• 33:28
  Traditional, I have to do Joy to the World.
• 33:30
  Yeah. Still not. I always think of the Jeremiah was a bullfrog song,
• 33:35
  though, when I hear that title. Joy to the World.
• 33:41
  Joy to the World.
• 33:43
  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I think of the church version that I see in Christmas
• 33:48
  Eve. You know what I don't like? What's that? Mariah Carey.
• 33:51
  Oh, no. No, I don't mind Mariah Carey's Christmas.
• 33:54
  Apparently you feel like. You got opinions. I don't need those whistle tones.
• 33:58
  I feel like Pentatonix is kind of shoved. Oh, yeah, it is. It really is.
• 34:03
  I like their version of Mary, Did You Know? I can't lie. I love that version.
• 34:07
  Yeah. And what's the one with like, the one is like really hard rock,
• 34:11
  but then they also have orchestra playing I don't know but I like it already
• 34:14
  Trans-Siberian Well the Trans-Siberian Orchestra Yeah If you've not been to
• 34:18
  see them and you get the opportunity they're amazing,
• 34:22
  Like when you started that I didn't know who you were talking about and then
• 34:25
  all of a sudden But yeah it's like They're great Yeah Yeah Well that's Christmas
• 34:30
  talk for the year That's a good one John Ho ho ho,
• 34:34
  And have a Merry Christmas and we'll see you in 2026 Merry Christmas We've got
• 34:39
  one more episode after this before 2026 Oh, okay. We'll see you next week then.