Bob Buerkle to STRS board: How STRS missed opportunities that would have benefited us to the tune of billions!

Bob Buerkle’s speech to the STRS board

March 19, 2026

Around 1992 STRS began offering the option for retirees to be able to purchase Dental and Vision Insurance as a supplement. If you purchase both, the cost is just under $500 per year for the retiree and just over $600 per year for their spouse. TODAY, you can get this coverage for FREE WITH DOZENS OF Medicare Advantage Plans available to the general public. Most of these plans also include coverage for hearing aids up to $3,000 or $4,000 every few years.

In 2006 the Federal Government began subsidizing State Pension Plans like STRS, but only if they applied for it. STRS wasted three years before it started offering the current Government-subsidized Medicare Advantage Plan in 2009. Since STRS has over 100,000 retirees in their health care plan and the Federal subsidy is over $12,000 per retiree today, STRS receives over ONE BILLION, TWO HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS in subsidies each year. Therefore, we now know that STRS missed out on the opportunity to receive about 3 BILLION SUBSIDY DOLLARS between 2006 and 2009, while the HC fund was needlessly drained of precious funds. During those three years STRS also used 1% of total Ohio School payroll, which added approximately $300 million to the HC fund that could have been placed into the pension fund instead. Furthermore, STRS continued to place 1% of total payroll into the HC reserves until 2014, five years after the end of the Great Recession of 2008-09, and that’s another $500 million not placed into the pension fund. Also, once monies are in the HC fund, they can no longer be returned to the pension fund.

So, what has happened over the last 12 years without contributing one dollar of Employer contributions into the HC fund? Well, thanks to the Federal Government subsidies for the STRS Medicare Advantage Plan, the HC fund reserves actually grew from under $4 billion dollars to about $5 billion, even after paying for all of the HC for retirees for the past 12 years. DO YOU THINK THE STRS EXECUTIVE HEALTH CARE DECISIONS FROM 2006-2014 WERE MOST PRUDENT?

Finally, I believe that STRS could include Dental, Vision and Hearing coverage in our plan, just like the plans available to the general public. A number of the plans also provide a subsidy to those STRS retirees who also qualify for Social Security. The plan that I chose adds about $1000 to my Social Security benefit each year, and provides me with a limited credit card to spend up to $200 a year in over-the-counter health aids. For these reasons I chose to leave the STRS Health Care Plan. I think STRS could, and should, provide similar benefits going forward; otherwise, we might have a mass exodus of healthy people leaving the STRS Health Care Plan.

One caveat – The STRS annual maximum out-of-pocket is far less, at about $1500 in-network, versus about $6-7,000 for most of the public plans with similar benefits. So, if you have a lot of health issues, or think that you might need multiple surgeries in the near future, you might be better off to stay with the STRS Plan.