May I strongly recommend that Virginia citizens who wish to comment on the health benefits proposal pause for a moment to read this editorial today in our state capital newspaper. 

It makes perfectly clear that the cost to the state is negligible, since beneficiaries will have to secure this coverage at their expense or the state employee.

Sincerely,

Bob Witeck

The Richmond Times Dispatch Editorial

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Morgan Griffith, the Republican majority leader in the House of Delegates,
cried foul last week when Gov. Tim Kaine announced a change to state
health-insurance policies that would allow same-sex partners to benefit. "He
gets to throw a bone to his base and then create a land mine for the
incoming administration," Griffith said, adding: "To change a policy in the
last month of administration calls it into question."

A close examination suggests Griffith, not Kaine, is being hasty. The policy
change would permit state employees to offer coverage to (1) a single
qualified adult (2) who lived in the same household for at least a year.
That could be a same-sex partner, a brother, an aunt, an elderly parent, or
merely a close friend.

What's more, the state employee offering the coverage would have to pay the
full cost of the coverage. That stands in sharp contrast with other coverage
for state workers, under which the employee pays only a small fraction -- 20
percent or less -- of the premium price.

Given that requirement, and the fact that only a minute fraction of state
employees are likely to seek the coverage, it seems unlikely that the cost
to the taxpayers would amount to more than the proverbial budgetary rounding
error. Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell has termed the proposal "noble." That might
be too generous a term for so stingy a change. But we're glad to see he's
open to it -- and hope the Assembly will be as well.