The Fight to Provide High Quality and Affordable Health Care for Union Members

The Fight to Provide High Quality and Affordable Health Care for Union Members

Health Care is a product, akin to visiting a supermarket, an automobile dealer or a doctor’s office, you purchase a product and the seller charges and the marketplace determines the price. Grocery stores are replaced by supermarkets and online purchasing and the choice of products shrinks, and, prices increase. 

Hospitals and all medical providers are capitalists, they design their services to maximize profits. Your health plan, usually provided by your employer is contracted with the provider and over the last few decades costs have increased and the rates of increase have accelerated. Over time your employer, a school board or a city is faced with raising taxes, reducing services and/or charging the end users, the cost of heath plans only increases

.Can state or federal governments halt the accelerating costs of heath/medical services? In theory, yes, in reality we have not seen any enthusiasm. The mega healthcare industry has effectively thwarted any attempt to limit costs. 

Legislation in New York State, the NYS Health Act, called “Medicare for All,” fails to identify a funding source and would require a massive bureaucracy. Currently the bill does not have support, as written, at the state level. At the federal level legislation created Medicare Advantage Plans that are supported with federal dollars, the plans are administered by for profits corporations and sharply criticized by some, unfortunately even current levels of funding for Medicare/Medicaid are inadequate and Congress has been unable to resolve significant differences,  Republicans actually support reducing Medicare/Medicaid benefits. Perhaps, with a Biden second term federal legislation can help fund employee health plans.

In New York City the 300,000 unionized city employees, members of dozens of unions, form the Municipal Labor Coalition, the MLC negotiates basic heath coverage in three categories, active employees, retirees not covered by Medicare and retirees covered by Medicare. Over the decade the City and the MLC have managed to find “savings” to fund heath plans without additional costs to the City.

The Adams administration requires $600M to continue the city employee retirement plan called Senior  Care, the plan chosen by most Medicare eligible retirees. The MLC, with support of the UFT leadership created a Medicare Advantage Plan, supported by federal dollars, as you know the plan was opposed and the Appellate Court ruled violated the City Charter.

The process is back at step 1, the process to “negotiate” health coverage requires an arbitrator to engage the City and the MLC, Martin Scheinman is the arbitrator leading the process, back in my UFT rep days I argued a few cases before Scheinman. He has worked on thousands of cases and is the “go to” arbitrator to resolve the most complicated contentious cases.

I was arguing a case  with a money issue, the details lost in the fogs of time. After I finished my “brilliant” presentation it was the Department’s turn, Scheinman told the Department he understood the issues, suggested the Department settle the case and turned to me and said, “Don’t be greedy.”

 I guess I wasn’t,  we resolved the case.

The entire process is back at step 1, finding $600M through “savings,” or finding new revenue streams.

From the union side “premiums,” shifting some of the cost to members is not acceptable. What happens if the impasse can’t be resolved?

I don’t know.

The MLC is also concurrently negotiating health benefits for inservice members

.While what we are witnessing is New York centric every union across the country is facing the same conundrum: how do you provide adequate member health plans without shifting the cost burden to members, a “solution” that is occurring all too frequently.

I don’t know the answer, I do know some agreements require members pay for dependent coverage, some don’t cover retirees, others move retiree coverage to an Advantage Care provider, all “solutions” unacceptable to the MLC. 

Can the City impose a plan, without the approval of the MLC, that meets the requirements in the City Charter? I don’t know?/ Can the City simply no longer offer Senior Care and require retirees to select one of the other plans?

We are a year away from the Democratic Mayoral primary: Eric Adams and Brad Landor, the current Comptroller, the two most impactful electeds in the City may very well face off.

Will they avoid the retiree health plan issue or try and find a solution? 300,000 city employees are a very substantial number of potential voters. Mulgrew succeeded getting the Class Size Reduction bill into law, signed by governor, it required incredible political skills, tiptoeing through the Albany morass

The current tossing brickbats at Mulgrew is not productive, The UFT election is in the spring, no candidates have announced; however the campaign is underway.

The City “handshake” indicating a resolved City budget is probably a few days away, deep cuts have been averted, lots of hard work, coalition building and understanding the chaos called city government

Will the MLC, of which the UFT is a major part,  cobble together a satisfactory resolution. I’m hopeful and I’d bet some folks will oppose, no matter the resolution, for some “politics” is more destructive than constructive.

I remain confident, although wary