The Public Education Health Trust

With Labor Day behind us, the school year is in full swing. To our teachers and their support staff in the Mat-Su and across Alaska, thank you. 2020 and 2021 have been years like no other, and an academic year that most of us are hopeful to not have to repeat. As a teacher myself, I feel excitement, COVID based apprehension and desire to support our classes.

We still don’t know exactly what school will look like for the remainder of 2021 and 2022, but we do know that educators and support staff will be right there with students, teaching, supporting, adapting, overcoming, and doing everything in their power to ensure our children have a good year.

The Public Education Health Trust (PEHT) will be there as well, providing certainty for our members that their health care needs and options are being attended to by an independent, non-profit organization with the single mission of supporting educators. PEHT unites large and small Alaska school districts together to combine their purchasing power. This leads to reduced costs and increases the availability of benefits. We support innovative methods to keep health care costs low and provide local choice and local control while ensuring low cost health insurance options for our members.

PEHT provides 8 different insurance plans to 24 districts and associations, representing both teachers and support staff alike. Including families and dependents PEHT represents 16,000 Alaskans. Our non-profit setup and small team reduce our administrative overhead, passing those savings on to our school districts and members. We spend more than 95 cents of every dollar on covered medical services, and just 5 cents on every dollar on administrative costs. All in all, PEHT is proud of being an Alaska-based organization that takes care of our members.

We know that health care can be a vast, overwhelming topic, particularly for busy educators and support staff. That’s why PEHT does as much of the leg work as we can to support our members with accurate, understandable information leading to less stress with the decisions they must make while advocating for care.

PEHT will keep working to contain the cost of health care in Alaska, and lower it where we can, as we’ve done through our innovative partnerships with organizations like Providence Alaska Medical Center and BridgeHealth, a medical tourism provider. Together, these partnerships have saved our members millions of dollars. While the modern health care system has many moving parts, PEHT uses our expertise to make important changes to the aspects of it we can influence.

As we all face the challenges of a global pandemic and the impacts on our friends and family, PEHT wants to make sure that our teachers and education support staff know they are respected and valued. Thank you again for your time on screen, in the classroom, and with our youth.

The past year has taught us that protecting our health is a crucial part of our economy and our lives. PEHT is here to support our educators and give you opportunities to take control of your future health.

Tim Walters is a teacher in the Mat-Su School District. His interest in healthcare and commitment to the Public Education Health Trust stems from his work in his local association. Over the years he’s seen the importance of healthcare grow to be one of the most important concerns for educators and their families. He’s committed to serving the Trust and offering the best healthcare coverage at the lowest cost. Tim has served as a Trustee on the Trust since 2013.