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A large system of collective health insurance, however structured, which significantly reduced PAT's and other public employers' costs would also make it much more acceptable to create a pension sinking fund via legislation to pay the remaining legacy costs and remove them from PAT management's docket, which I believe is also a necessary step.
Completely agreed, and I actually think something along those lines will happen. Eventually. We just have to try to keep the state running until that becomes politically possible.
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This seems to imply there is an absolute standard of health-provision efficiency against which all advanced systems can be measured, but I can't imagine how that would be defined.
It is tricky to do with extreme precision, but the differences in costs are so great you don't need that much precision. Basically you control for non-health-care factors known to affect health outcomes, then look to see if radically more expensive systems are achieving detectably better outcomes. It turns out that there is no such evidence that the alternatives are achieving detectably better outcomes than UK-style systems, but their costs are much higher. And that is an excellent prima facie case that UK-style systems are much more efficient.
Not to get too far afield, but part of what is going on here is that health care at the margins doesn't really have all that much to do with outcomes (meaning other marginal factors, like lifestyle, genetics, physical safety risks, and so on, tend to dominate). You have to do certain basics right--immunization, decent emergency care, competent diagnosis, available pharmaceuticals, and so forth--but that core stuff really doesn't have to be all that expensive. That's not to say more expensive stuff isn't worth it under any circumstances, but most of the possible benefit is achieved with the basic stuff.
So it actually shouldn't be too surprising that greatly increasing spending on health care above a competent baseline doesn't do much to improve outcomes. And that is what we see.
Upping state funding over and over and creating new taxes or raising taxes should't be on the table.
State funding for transit has been going down, not up. It has decreased more rapidly than wage and benefit costs have increased in recent years.
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Originally Posted by h_curtis
These are tough enough times and we just got hit huge with a massive county tax increase
Allegheny County raised taxes by 1 mil. So for every 100k of assessed value, taxes will go up by $100/year or $8/month. I don't know how you can call that massive.
BUT, more importantly, consider why the county had to raise taxes. The county had to make up for lost revenue due to state funding cuts. So, state funding cuts to transit, which have been happening, are far more likely to cost you money than save you any money. Because when the state cuts funding to PAT, you're not going to get any money back from the state, but the county may decide to fill some of the hole by raising county taxes. On top of that, bus services will be reduced.
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Originally Posted by h_curtis
lets not forget these new assessments.
The reassessment does not equal a tax hike. There's also strong evidence that suggests that the majority of property owners in Allegheny County will have their taxes moderately decrease. And just because that's not your personal experience doesn't make that any less true.
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Originally Posted by h_curtis
People can only shell out more and more money to a breaking point.
As discussed above, state funding cuts to transit will definitely not save you any money. In fact it's much more likely to cost you and thousands of other people in Allegheny County more money. It's a raw deal.
As previously noted many times, PAT has in fact frequently explained how legacy costs are affecting their budget, and they have explained why state law prevents them from doing anything about those legacy costs. Perhaps most importantly, they have created an entirely different benefits situation for their current employees.
That's not nothing. What is missing is your new and arbitrary requirement that they lobby Harrisburg with a specific plan in hand, which is transparently just something you came up with to continue this lame attempt at rationalization.
And if, for some reason, PAT had actually done that, you would come up with some other thing they had failed to do to satisfy you. Because you are committed to not being satisfied.
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(3)relying on a begging campaign year after year will eventually have this result if 1&2's mentality isn't changed.
Demanding that Allegheny County get back a fraction of the extra money it pays to the state for transportation funding is not "begging".
Among the many lies spread by anti-transit folks, this is probably the most serious one (I doubt anyone actually cares about the "I don't like PAT's lobbying strategy--let's destroy all transit in Allegheny County" nonsense). We give the state WAY more than we get back. We aren't the beggars, they are.
Which is an efficient use of their time, since the legislature has expressed an interest in passing a transportation funding bill, but exactly no interest in addressing PAT's legacy costs.
Actually, I think you ARE wrong. In fact we've seen that all over this thread: most of the "pro-transit" people posting here have been supportive of reforms to decrease PAT's legacy costs. Of course there are multiple ways to do that, but I think most current stakeholders in transit understand why in general such reforms would be to their benefit.
Instead, I think what you are expressing is actually a false view pushed by anti-transit people. They want the public to believe that those who care about transit services are really just standing up for unions, and to that end they deny any possibility that people who care about transit could understand they have conflicts of interest with the unions when it comes to legacy costs. But once you actually start talking to real transit advocates, it quickly becomes apparent that is a baseless smear.
Ok, so we agree that there really haven't been any protests focusing on the legacy costs. That was the OP point.
Urban Transit supporters live in urban areas, correct? Urban areas, at least in Allegheny County, have proportionately more Democrats than Republicans, correct? Democrats view unions more favorably than Republicans, correct? Democrats are more favorable to urban transit than Republicans. It reallly makes no sense to say that I am a Democrat but I am against unions because union support is important to the Democratic Party.
A very tepid interest, in my view, and one not even guaranteed to focus on transit as opposed to rural roads-n-bridges.
It would be very difficult to cut out transit from a transportation fix.
People seem to think we are all alone in this. We are not: there are many transit agencies in Pennsylvania, and transit funding has always been part of the transportation mix because it does in fact serve a lot of important stakeholders (not just riders, but also lots of Chamber of Commerce types, and so forth).
The anti-transit Tea Party types are in that sense nowhere close to being a majority. They just have disproportionate influence on people like Corbett.
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I can't see that PAT would stand to lose much by shifting focus to a legacy cost fix - though it would have been better to start the lobbying five years ago.
Suppose there was only a 10% chance of a funding fix. That would be long odds, but the chance of a legacy cost fix is 0%. So they should still devote everything to a funding fix, because lobbying for a legacy cost fix is totally pointless.
Of course they can still be working toward making a legacy cost fix possible in the future. But that wouldn't involve lobbying at this stage, and in fact they are doing the sorts of things that make sense at this stage already.
It is tricky to do with extreme precision, but the differences in costs are so great you don't need that much precision. Basically you control for non-health-care factors known to affect health outcomes, then look to see if radically more expensive systems are achieving detectably better outcomes.
Hmm...still looks comparative to me, but fine, it's merely a quibble.
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Not to get too far afield, but part of what is going on here is that health care at the margins doesn't really have all that much to do with outcomes (meaning other marginal factors, like lifestyle, genetics, physical safety risks, and so on, tend to dominate).
Ironically, one of the chief lifestyle factors is the amount of physical movement in the course of a day, which correlates enormously to use of public transportation - which is to say, we're right back to PAT, and it's not far afield from the thread topic at all.
Sorry, I assumed you were able to discern that 'nothing' means nothing meaningful & I wouldn't need to explain the difference between giving a problem lip service to actually trying to actively tackle the issue which in this case would be developing a plan of action or strategy. It's very odd that you are against any such suggestion
Not sure why you're insistent that PATs management stick to the status quo which has produced nothing in the form of a long term solution to the agency's problem.
It's far from being anti transit by offering solutions to a problem that is plaguing the system that should at least be attempted rather then immediately dismissed as 'that will never work'
Ok, so we agree that there really haven't been any protests focusing on the legacy costs. That was the OP point.
I'm not sure who you are referring to as the OP. But if you are talking about street protests, then yes, I am not aware of street protests focusing on that issue.
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Urban Transit supporters live in urban areas, correct? Urban areas, at least in Allegheny County, have proportionately more Democrats than Republicans, correct? Democrats view unions more favorably than Republicans, correct? Democrats are more favorable to urban transit than Republicans.
This chain of logic depends on multiple fallacies of composition:
Some people who don't live in urban areas do in fact support transit. Some people who live in urban areas and support transit are Republicans, or members of third parties, or are unaffiliated. Some Democrats who live in urban areas and support transit are not generally supportive of unions. Some Democrats who live in urban areas and support transit and who are generally supportive of unions still think legacy benefits should be moderated (in fact, there is a good argument that legacy benefits hurt present employees and undermine unionization of present and future employees).
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It reallly makes no sense to say that I am a Democrat but I am against unions because union support is important to the Democratic Party.
Basically, this is like saying if you are a Republican, you must be an Evangelical Christian, since Evangelical Christians are important to the Republican Party.
The truth is that in a (mostly) two-party system, most partisans will find themselves at odds with one or more major factions within their party.
Suppose there was only a 10% chance of a funding fix. That would be long odds, but the chance of a legacy cost fix is 0%. So they should still devote everything to a funding fix, because lobbying for a legacy cost fix is totally pointless.
But suppose that there is a 5% chance of a funding fix in the next two years, rising to 33% over the following ten, and a 2% chance of a health-legacy fix, rising to 75% over the same decade. Further suppose that if PAT were to focus its public relations around the second option, data shows a likelihood of improved public support in political terms, further improving that option's chance. Clearly, it would be better to follow the second option.
In fact, neither of us knows what the probabilities are. However, I believe UKYank's point was that by focusing on a funding fix, PAT sacrifices some public support (his, at the very least), while it seems to me likely that a legacy-fix plan would win back some measure of public support, if only because it seemed a moderate solution in the spirit of the times. Public support, even if not directly voiced on PAT's behalf (by rallies and sitting in intersections and so forth) can shift the odds eventually. This hardly seems like a silly course - seems perfectly sensible to me.
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