Aren’t you glad you’re not a member of the board of directors for the Board of Pensions? Life in that group hasn’t been fun lately.
For one thing, the board members are faced with the dilemma facing all medical insurance programs these days: finding a way to provide members the best possible medical care when costs are growing at an Indy 500 pace — and, at the same time, trying to apply the changes brought about by the Affordable Care Act.
The BOP also faces the extra challenge of doing all that in a church context, where most plan members aren’t professionally trained insurance executives or MBAs but local church pastors. Seminary didn’t train them for this.
On top of all that, board members’ inboxes have been bombarded with criticisms from colleagues in their church who are dumbfounded and enraged over proposals brought to the board for a vote at their March meeting in Philadelphia (see Page 11).
We are going to resist the temptation to cast aspersions on the board members — we want to trust their good intentions.
But we feel compelled to voice our concerns, and to urge them to steer clear of the proposals as prepared.
The first and most troubling issue with these proposals is that they have been presented via a process that, unlike past BOP processes, lacked extensive consultations with the larger church. While the board’s separate corporate status grants it the legal right to change the rules, it normally seeks extensive input from a broad swath of Presbyterians, including General Assembly commissioners and delegates. This process has lacked that input.
A second problem is that the proposal, if adopted, will depart from the past practice of “call-neutrality.” Past and present practice has ensured that a congregation would pay the same medical insurance premiums for a minister with a family as for a single minister. The new proposal would charge higher premiums for employees with family members, thereby allowing congregations to call unmarried, childless employees at a substantial discount.
A third problem would arise as rural fields of service would be set at a disadvantage as they seek to call candidates to serve with them. Married ministry candidates would run to the cities and suburbs so their spouses could find gainful employment — given that the ministerial employees would either have to pay higher annual premiums for health coverage or give up Board of Pensions coverage for their spouses and children.
Fourth, in a time of obvious denominational membership decline, some entities are putting forth great efforts to generate growth — e.g., the 1,001 New Worshiping Communities initiative by the Presbyterian Mission Agency, and the Presbyterian Foundation’s seminary debt-reduction program for new pastors serving small churches. Rather than helping stem the decline, this change in the medical insurance program would exacerbate it.
Certainly, the program needs to undergo some changes. In these times, its generous and thorough coverage cannot be sustained as is. But before implementing any changes in kind, some changes by degree should be considered.
How is it that a person earning $250,000 per year pays a medical deductible of $1,085, whereas the deductible of one earning just $35,000 is $500? Let’s start by setting a consistent deductible percentage that doesn’t cap out at any point. The same goes for charging premiums: let them be set at a standard percentage, no caps allowed for the upper-level plan members. If the present premiums can’t sustain the need, let us increase them again by a percentage point or two, as in past years, so the pain gets shared fairly. And if employees need to step up to pay part of the program’s coverage — a change that’s taking place in so many other industries — let such a change be implemented incrementally over several years.
The Board of Trustees of the Board of Pensions has been entrusted with the unenviable task of keeping solvent a vitally important support program for the church. We trust their intentions, even if we question some of their ideas. Let us pledge to them our prayers, so that God’s wisdom will emerge through their deliberations, and that God’s mission will be better accomplished by us all as a result.
—JHH
