This week’s Middleboro Gazette column concerns health care for town employees. The increase in costs for these plans mostly exceed our increase in revenues and are a big part of the reason for the deficits in recent and coming years.

The column draws heavily from information in the recent Sean Murhpy articles, along with some information I got from FinCom chairman Rich Pavadore and Town Manager Charlie Cristello. The column tries to give the layman an understanding of how town healthcare plans work, how they strain the budget, how they compare to the private sector, and some of the available options. It also talks about some changes currently under negotiation that would achieve significant savings in the coming fiscal year and beyond.

Not as entertaining perhaps as one of my typical “Hey, look what the BOS did” columns but valuable I think for the majority of us who don’t understand how this stuff works.

As always, you can send email to me using the address included with every column. One thing that may not be clear is that these emails are generally not shared with the editor. I love getting email from readers but you should also send email to the editor to tell her how much you love, hate, or ignore my columns. A CC or BCC will do that and save you a second email.

UPDATE
On a related topic this Globe article looks at the wide gap between public and private sector jobs. Guess which comes out on top – by a wide margin?