What happened to derail the earlier promises was basically a matter of numbers. A huge pool of currently employed educators would require a fairly sizable chunk of money to fund it billions of dollars. Add in the proposal to include retired educators and the dollar estimates are even higher. Finding that money and guaranteeing a continued flow of it has become a fatal stumbling block for legislators in their desire to honor their promise to Texas educators. But just wait, there s still time for that suggestion which will be unpalatable to teachers.
Legislators are in a quandary.
In our present economic recession, fully funding a teacher medical plan would almost certainly require raising taxes in Texas in the next few years, possibly even a state income tax. Voters will be in an uproar if that happens. Yet, legislators know that teachers are also a huge voting bloc and they will not easily forget a broken promise. The Teacher Retirement System of Texas was directed to follow up on implementation. Almost half of all Texas school districts 474 did not offer a comparable insurance plan.