By Charles Young, WV News
CLARKSBURG (WV News) — Gov. Patrick Morrisey recently said he plans to call a special session of the Legislature to have lawmakers address rising premium costs for the West Virginia Public Employees Insurance Agency.
State Treasurer Larry Pack, who served as secretary of revenue under former Gov. Jim Justice, said PEIA has grown beyond its original scope and has become unwieldy and unmanageable.
“Our previous governments — governors, the legislators, whoever — really created a problem for West Virginia with PEIA,” Pack said during an interview with WV News. “If you go back 20 or 25 years ago, most every city and county insurance was with Blue Cross or something like that in the private sector.”
Over time, employees of county and municipal governments, as well as employees of various nonprofit organizations, have been added to PEIA, he said.
“We said, ‘Come on in, join us.’ So all of a sudden after all this come-on-in deal, we’ve created a huge problem because we have about 200,000 West Virginians in this program. Only about 30,000 of them or so — maybe 40 or 50,000 — are state employees,” Pack said.
