WEA Insurance Program Designed with You in Mind

By Amir Zaman
WEA Insurance
Employee Benefits Specialist

September 1998

What better time than the beginning of the school year to explain the benefits and services WEAC’s insurance programs have to offer, and how these programs fit in with WEAC’s commitment to you.

At a glance WEA Insurance Trust sponsors group insurance programs: health, long term disability, life, dental, and long term care. These plans are bargained between local unions and school districts. WEA TSA Trust offers individuals the opportunity to save and invest pretax dollars for retirement by using a guaranteed rate account and mutual funds. A school district must have a signed agreement with the WEA TSA Trust before an individual from that district can designate this Trust as their choice for an annuity. The majority of school districts do have these agreements with this Trust. For more information call 1-800-279-4030. WEAC Member Benefit Trust offers personal insurance products such as auto, home, and long term care. These products are not offered through the districts. Members interested in learning more about what this Trust has to offer can call 1-800-279-4010.

Two of the programs, the WEA Insurance Trust and the WEAC Member Benefit Trust are designed to protect the financial well-being of members. They do that by offering group and individual insurance programs that are among the best values in their class. And, of course, being member-driven programs, they do even more.

For example, the WEA Insurance Trust has been working for a number of years to put the “health” back in health insurance. While we realize that part of our value comes from running the business cost-effectively and from keeping an eye on medical costs, we think it’s an even better idea to control costs by having a healthy population. And, we believe that we can make our members some of the healthiest residents of this state by giving them the tools and information they need to become and remain healthy.

Similarly, the Member Benefit Trust provides personal insurance protection such as auto and home insurance. While such insurance is widely available in the marketplace, what’s harder to find is unbiased information on what protection you need, and a yardstick you can use for comparison. The Member Benefit Trust offers both these services.

Our third program, the WEA Tax Sheltered Annuity (TSA) Trust, helps members save for retirement on a pre-tax basis. Public school employees belong to one of the few select groups that can participate in tax-sheltered annuities. The TSA Trust was established to ensure that members are made aware of this opportunity, that they don’t have to pay exorbitant fees to participate in such a program, and that they get competitive returns on their savings. In fact, the guaranteed rate offered by this Trust has been the best available to educators for many years. And, those members who choose to invest in the stock market will find that the TSA Trust offers a variety of quality options.

If you build it . . .

But, you may ask, do members really need the union’s insurance programs? Isn’t what’s available in the marketplace adequate?

No. While there are many respectable programs available in the marketplace, the only programs designed for members, by members, and that have the members’ best interests at heart, are these Trusts.

Don Krahn, executive director of WEAC, was director of field services in 1968. As he tells it, a welfare committee was working hard at that time trying to determine the most effective way to provide members with insurance services.

“At that time,” Krahn said, “WEAC would endorse certain insurance products for members. But I knew from personal experience as a negotiator in Fort Atkinson that such an approach would never produce great benefits for members.

“Under that arrangement,” Krahn said, “no matter which insurance company we endorsed, or how good a deal the insurer gave members, we could never tell our members that what we had endorsed was the best product for them.”

So, Krahn and the welfare committee looked at alternatives and ultimately decided to go with the idea of an insurance trust, adding two others a few years later. All three Trusts are completely independent of WEAC. While a Board of Trustees appointed by WEAC overseas all programs, no money from the Trusts is returned to WEAC. Rather, the Trusts use excess resources to improve benefits, lower premiums, and assure that finances are more than adequate to handle any claims now and in the future.

Posted September 1, 1998