Am I my brother’s keeper?

Give state workers some credit.

The men and women who keep our government running day-to-day are dedicated professionals. They’re your friends, neighbors and loved ones, and they truly care.

So, if you were to tell the average state employee he or she had the opportunity to:

1. Prevent more than 18,000 working poor adults from losing their only source of coverage in the state-subsidized Basic Health Plan

2. Allow all poor kids covered by Medicaid to continue to see their doctor

3. Allow most of the elderly poor to continue receiving nursing home care and the disabled to remain in the adult family homes of their choice, and

4. Preserve crucial mental health services for some of the most vulnerable among us

…and it would only cost them $25 a month, would they do it? I think they would. Their unions might try to talk them out of it, but they would say yes.

What if the state employees could do all this and save money in the process? That would be a yes, for sure.

We can save the safety net, and here’s how:

Currently, the Senate budget proposal includes $140 million of new funding for state employee and K-12 health care benefits. At a time of unprecedented cuts to Washington’s health care safety net, this increase amounts to 3 percent per year through 2009-11, or 6 percent total.

How many Washington families expect to see a 6 percent increase in their benefit packages over the next few years? More importantly, how many additional Washington families will be dependent on our crumbling safety net after losing their jobs in these difficult times?

If we simply froze state employee health care benefits, which are currently funded at $723 per month per employee, and then subtracted $25 from that amount, we could save $169 million — enough to rescue the most critical parts of our health care safety net.

What do our state workers lose in this exchange? Nothing, if we’re as smart as California, which has creatively redesigned its health care coverage plans, offering new products that actually save money for enrollees.

California offers lower health premiums to state employees if they enroll in one of the newer plan options — Blue Shield of California NetValue (HMO) and PERS Select (PPO). These “high performance network” plans provide the same level of benefits and quality of care as previous plans. The difference is that enrollees pay a lower premium in exchange for choosing from a smaller panel of physicians.

For example, let’s look at a member who currently has health coverage through standard Blue Shield for herself and her husband, 4-year-old child and a baby on the way. If she transfers from the standard plan to Blue Shield NetValue, she would save more than $1,800 in premiums in 2009. She could use this savings to pay for additional health services for her family, including co-payments for office visits, prescriptions, urgent care visits, emergency room visits — and still keep an extra $348 in her pocket.

It will take only a short time and some creativity to offer our public employees the same options. In the meantime, let’s just ask state employees to consider helping out those who can least help themselves. My guess is, they’d be honored. And as a state employee myself, I would gladly join them in this tiny sacrifice.

Next year, we state employees would get our own high performance network with broadened choices, more flexibility and a world of new, potential savings. In doing so, we would be demonstrating that new health insurance models provide excellent coverage at a much lower price.

I invite my colleagues, the majority Democrats, to join me in pursuing true budget equity. As they make deep cuts in the state budget, I ask them to remember the least among us. Twenty-five dollars a month will buy each state employee two lattes per week … or their share of $169 million toward our highest human purpose: Loving our neighbor as ourselves. Most of us would be honored to give.

To Senate Majority Leader Brown, Speaker of the House Chopp, and Governor Gregoire we say, “Please. Let us help!”

State Sen. Cheryl Pflug (R-Maple Valley) is vice chair of the Senate Republican Caucus.