School Districts Are Turning To WEA To Save Money

Whoopsie, Scott Walker just got caught in another lie.

Remember all the times that Walker said he saved the taxpayers bundles of money by killing the teachers' right to collective bargaining and thus taking away their contracts for WEA Trust, the union's health care system. Yeah, not so much:

In March, Onalaska School District officials dropped WEA Trust for a dual-choice insurance option offered by Gundersen and Mayo-affiliated HMOs. Cashton School District switched to Gundersen in 2011. The La Crosse School District stuck with WEA Trust only after the insurer agreed to lower its rates.

But now some districts are switching back to WEA Trust for the same reason they left: to save money.

Bangor School District abandoned WEA Trust for Gundersen Lutheran Health Plan and is now switching back because Gundersen plans to increase rates 10 percent.

“The time when you can just eat a 10 percent increase is over,” Bangor Superintendent Roger Foegen said. “We thought we had entered into a partnership with Gundersen that would last for a few years, but we weren’t willing to eat that kind of increase. It’s not fair to our taxpayers.”

Complaints from school staff about Gundersen’s customer service also influenced the decision, Foegen said. Gundersen said there are always bugs to work out when taking on a new customer.

The move seems paradoxical, but some districts may find savings by leaving WEA Trust; others will save money be switching back. Onalaska will save about $660,000, Bangor about $80,000.

[...]

Bangor isn’t the only school district in the state to double back after leaving WEA Trust for a competitor. Insurers will come to a school district with a low bid for the first year and raise the rate at the first chance of renewal, said Steve Lyons, a spokesman for WEA Trust.

“We’ve regained some of them already,” he said.

In other words, it wasn't that Walker was really concerned about saving taxpayers any money. It was just to make sure that the taxpayers' money was going to Big Insurance, which wrote out big checks to his campaign.

Of course, this fits in with everything else he's done thus far.  His whole term has been about nothing but giving kickbacks to his campaign supporters.