President Lou Anna K. Simon said the plan will help avoid future layoffs. In the face of a shrinking budget, MSU can either reduce the number of employees or reduce their cost to the university, she said.

“One of the big costs of people is health care,” she said.

Collective bargaining units, faculty, retirees and Academic Governance committees are involved in the discussions, MSU spokesman Terry Denbow said.

The University Committee on Faculty Affairs, or UCFA, will present any recommendations to Wilcox sometime after its next meeting, which is scheduled for the end of the month, UCFA Chairwoman Deborah Moriarty said.

“We should have a recommendation to the provost very shortly after that,” Moriarty said.

“We’re on a time line where we want to get something done before the end of the semester.”

The committee also created a survey to gauge the opinions of faculty and academic staff on health. The survey results will be considered when formulating recommendations, Moriarty said.

“Each (committee member) will take two questions and read all of the comments,” Moriarty said at Tuesday’s Faculty Council meeting.

“(That) gives us more than one person doing each of the questions.”

The survey responses will be read very carefully and a summary will be presented to the committee, she said.

The recommendations could appear as an informational agenda item at an Executive Committee of Academic Council meeting in December and then be circulated through the rest of MSU’s governing bodies, Moriarty said.

Recommendations for how to meet a 10 percent reduction in costs and restrict future growth still are under discussion, Denbow said.

“We are in so many discussions and analyses about how to accomplish our goal,” Denbow said. “There’s a real common understanding of that goal and a real common commitment to achieving it in a fair and equitable way.”

Health care is just one area of benefits MSU employees receive, Wilcox said, but it’s also the most expensive and, for most people, the most important.

“(It’s important to) protect those people and those issues that are most important to us,” Wilcox said. “We don’t want to be in a position (where) we overlook someone or someone’s needs.”