NOW He Wants to Cut Lawmakers' Health Care

When Bill Rogers presided as chair of the Livingston County Board of Commissioners, he happily allowed the commissioners to soak taxpayers for the cost of generous health insurance benefits for their part-time jobs.

Despite tightening budgets a year ago, the commissioners never cut their own health insurance benefits even as they expected county departments to get by with fewer employees. Rogers and his fellow Republicans, who held every seat on the board, could easily have done away with these benefits for themselves had they so chosen.

But now that Rogers is in the state House, where he is not a chairman of anything, Rogers has seen the light. He has decided that public servants do not need health insurance and has introduced a measure to end health care benefits for retired lawmakers.

Fine. But the problem is, Rogers is in the minority party. Nothing he introduces is likely to go anywhere. It's not even a new idea.

My problem is, if Rogers thought doing away with health insurance is such a good idea, why didn't he do it when he had the chance, when he was chair of the county commission, when all it would have taken was a simple vote of the commission he chaired?

Could it be that Rogers only wants to look like he wants to cut his future health care (when he wouldn't cut his existing health care when he actually had the power to do so)? It's the best of both worlds -- he looks like he's against waste but still gets the benefit of receiving the waste he ostensibly wants to cut.