Last week, President Barack Obama ordered interim regulations designed to enable wildland firefighters employed by the federal government to purchase health insurance through their jobs.
For anyone who has seen this summers catastrophic wildfires, this seems like a no-brainer. People who risk their lives to save others lives and property, including public lands owned by the countrys citizens, should be treated better.
According to federal labor laws, most firefighters dont qualify as permanent employees. Even though they may put in nearly a full years worth of hours during the fire season, the demand for men and women skilled in fighting wildfires drops precipitously during the winter. Keeping thousands of firefighters on the payroll all year long doesnt make fiscal sense.
Policies that push them toward other jobs make even less sense. Come spring, it makes sense to attract those who know what theyre getting into and who already have been trained to fight fires effectively and safely.
Every employer, including Uncle Sam, knows that benefits arent cheap. Employers also know that good benefits help attract and retain good employees. Seasonal workers often dont receive benefits because theyre largely interchangeable. One quits, another is hired, only minimal training is required. Quality may suffer newly hired servers make more errors, for example, and the thumbs of new landscape personnel arent quite as green but inexperience goes with the territory and the budget.
Thats hardly true of firefighters. These arent slow bloomers who ought to grow up and get a real job. They may never have another job as hard as this one. The hours are long, the working conditions are miserable, and the work itself can be backbreaking, not to mention potentially fatal. They must respond quickly to rapidly worsening situations on unfamiliar terrain, and the consequences of not doing it well are catastrophic.
Although some will transition into permanent public-lands jobs, most of these young men and women wont fight fires as a lifelong career. Similarly, not all enlisted military personnel serve until retirement; that doesnt mean their service isnt valuable for its duration. While they serve, they deserve good benefits, and that certainly includes health insurance.
Insurance is available to nearly everyone for the right price, but anyone whos ever tried to buy an individual policy knows that it can be difficult to find and difficult to utilize distractions that firefighters certainly dont need. Individual insurance also can be more expensive than seasonal firefighters can afford, but the lack of insurance hampers their ability to seek care.
And they do need care, not only because they risk their lives and their health on our behalf but because occupational hazards arent the only health-care problems they face. Like everyone else, they catch colds and flu and fall off their bicycles on their days off. Also like everyone else, they may have families.
Letting them purchase insurance through their jobs is the right thing to do. Its also not a benefit that many Coloradans would begrudge them, especially not this year.