Teague Firms Dropped Insurance

During his 2008 congressional campaign in southern New Mexico, Democratic candidate and Hobbs businessman Harry Teague aired television ads touting the fact that his oil industry business provided health care to employees, among other generous benefits.

“All his life Harry Teague has worked to bring people together,” says one ad, still posted on YouTube. “That’s why he provides health care for co-workers and their families, and scholarships for them and their children, to keep opportunity here in New Mexico.”

Teague told the Journal on Tuesday that by the end of 2008, about 70 percent of his companies’ roughly 250 employees already had opted out of the health insurance program.

And a little over a year later, the rest were off the plan as well, but not because they chose to leave.

A report published Monday in Politico, a Washington-based newspaper and website, cited a memo to employees of Teague-affiliated companies telling them their health benefits were being eliminated. It was dated four days before Christmas 2009.

Read more: (Michael Coleman, “Teague Firms Dropped Insurance,” Albuquerque Journal, 5/12/10)