By: Kyle DeAngelis and Kate Connors

Amidst all the typical excitement and anxiety that come with starting a new school year, UFT chapter leaders and delegates had an item of unusual importance on their back-to-school checklists. At the end of August, it was announced that the UFT, in partnership with the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC), had reached an agreement with the City of New York, EmblemHealth and UnitedHealthcare to launch a new healthcare plan for in-service city workers and pre-Medicare retirees. The new plan, called the NYC Employees PPO Plan (or the NYCE PPO plan which, in what can only be described as a stroke of marketing genius, is pronounced the “nice plan”) will replace our current GHI-CBP plan starting on January 1, 2026.

On paper, the NYCE plan seems to modestly improve our healthcare coverage by expanding our network of providers while retaining our premium-free status for the next five years. Before the plan was officially approved, many members expressed concerns about UnitedHealthcare’s role as the new insurance provider for members living outside the “downstate 13,” or the 13 New York counties in and around the city. UnitedHealthcare’s reputation as being a particularly heinous actor in an industry that enriches itself by squeezing profits out of patients is well-documented and, despite UFT leadership’s assurances that there will be safeguards in place to protect members from any bad-faith denials of care, their role in this new plan deserved the scrutiny it received. 

UFT leadership was robust in their push for the plan, which was approved by the Delegate Assembly on September 29th. Perhaps UFT leadership is right about this plan, and UFT members will experience an increase in their options for healthcare providers without paying more for their coverage or seeing an increase in denials. Time will tell. But one thing is absolutely certain: this new plan will expire at the end of five years, at which point the market forces that are making high-quality, premium-free insurance such a rarity today will only have grown stronger, imperilling our access to premium-free coverage. There is, of course, another way forward, one that Michael Mulgrew and his allies in UFT leadership have inadvertently made the case for in pushing for the NYCE PPO plan: the New York Health Act, or NYHA.

What is the New York Health Act?

The New York Health Act is a bill that would create a universal, single-payer healthcare system in New York State. There would be no premiums, co-pays, or deductibles. No longer would for-profit insurance companies operate in New York, enriching themselves while restricting care. Healthcare would be between the doctor and patient without greedy, for-profit insurance companies or AI programs deciding whether they will cover the cost of your treatment. It is about time we catch up with the rest of the world’s industrialized nations, all of which operate a universal healthcare system. 

Under NYHA, all New York State residents and full-time state or city employees living out-of-state would be covered by the New York Health Plan. All doctors would be in-network, and all medical needs would be covered, including mental health, dental, vision, hearing and pharmaceuticals. Legislators have been particularly generous to public sector workers in the bill. Once passed, NYHA locks in New York City’s contribution percentage to our healthcare, which is currently 100%. This means public sector workers would maintain their current healthcare benefits without any diminishment at no cost at all.  Private sector workers would be subjected to a progressive payroll tax, sharing the cost with their employers. Over 95% of New Yorkers would pay less in payroll tax than they pay now in premiums, deductibles and co-pays. Only the wealthiest New Yorkers would see a slight increase, but even with a slight increase, NYHA also includes a benefit not currently provided by private plans, which is long-term care. 

Additionally, union workers need to consider the hidden costs behind our premium-free healthcare. Each contract negotiation, we sacrifice larger wage gains for our continued access to premium-free health insurance. When we get “premium-free” healthcare, like we do with the NYCE PPO, it simply means we received a lower wage increase in exchange. This is another benefit of NYHA; we could take healthcare off the bargaining table completely with its passage, enabling our union to fight for higher wage increases instead. 

Over the last several years, the UFT Delegate Assembly has passed two separate resolutions in support of the NYHA. However, UFT leadership now actively opposes the bill. Meanwhile, other unions like the New York State Nurses Association, the Doctors Council, CIR, 1199SEIU, PSC CUNY, and UAW all support NYHA. Legislators have been eager to meet with UFT leadership, and they have made it clear that they will work with labor to make amendments to the bill that would satisfy them. Unfortunately, the UFT has instead spent the last three years negotiating with greedy for-profit insurance companies. If UFT spent the last three years working with legislators to perfect the NYHA, perhaps we could have secured accessible, premium-free coverage not only for ourselves, but for all New Yorkers as well. Thankfully, it is not too late for our union to change course, as the current situation with our healthcare has only served to make the long-term case for NYHA stronger.  

How Mulgrew (Inadvertently) Made the Case for NYHA Stronger

In advocating for the NYCE PPO plan, Michael Mulgrew and other members of UFT leadership made several points that, taken together, make a compelling case for a universal healthcare system like the one that would be created by the New York Health Act. Consider: 

• On a September 2nd virtual town hall with chapter leaders and delegates, Michael Mulgrew emphatically declared that, “insurance companies are not our friends.” This statement is unequivocally true for reasons that are well documented. Health insurance companies in the United States have created a system that wastes more money and delivers less accessible care than the universal healthcare systems enjoyed by citizens of peer nations where such systems are in place. Mulgrew doubled down on this sentiment at the Delegate Assembly on September 29th, declaring that, “we are not going to wait for an industry to become benevolent when they are only driven by profit.” Working for the passage of NYHA would finally create a system in which healthcare is decoupled from the profit-driven industry that Mulgrew decries. 

• On the same September 2nd call, Mulgrew also emphasized that in the fight to control healthcare costs, no help from the federal government is coming for the foreseeable future. This is equally unsurprising. The Trump administration has made their priorities as they move to slash healthcare funding in order to pay for tax breaks for billionaires. If we cannot expect any substantial aid from the federal government for years to come, why not build from the state instead? This has precedent in Canada, where their national healthcare system originated as a provincial initiative in Saskatchewan. By passing NYHA, New York could lead the entire country towards a system of universal healthcare that prioritizes health over profits. 

• The general FAQ curated by the UFT to inform members about the NYCE PPO plan addresses the question of how the plan is able to maintain benefits and expand our network while also saving the city billions of dollars in healthcare spending by explaining that the bargaining power of 750,000 municipal workers was enough to compel the insurance companies to control costs. This is the same logic that underpins single-payer healthcare systems like NYHA: if 750,000 municipal workers creates a bargaining unit large enough to secure the benefits that UFT leadership insist exist within the NYCE PPO, imagine how much more powerful we would be if we united all 20 million New Yorkers under one universal healthcare system. We could control costs while also ensuring high-quality care for all, as they already do in all our peer nations around the world. 

• Lastly, UFT leadership has made clear that, once the NYCE PPO sunsets in five years, we’re going to have to make some important decisions about our healthcare. As healthcare costs continue to skyrocket, our access to premium-free is increasingly at risk. NYHA would guarantee our continued access to high-quality, premium-free healthcare in perpetuity. Instead of spending five years haggling with insurance companies like UnitedHealthcare who profiteer off our healthcare for benefits that are increasingly expensive to maintain, why not negotiate with the state to pass NYHA for the benefit of all our members and the communities we serve? 

Conclusion: Come Learn More About NYHA!

As soon as the NYCE PPO plan takes effect on January 1st, the five-year clock starts ticking on our access to premium-free healthcare. Passing the New York Health Act would not only enshrine our own access to premium-free care in perpetuity, but would also enable our students and their families to have access to the same care. We want to help make this vision a reality. To that end, we invite every UFT member to come and learn more about NYHA. In the weeks and months to come, we plan to launch virtual teach-ins in conjunction with the Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE) and Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP), an organization of doctors and other healthcare workers who advocate for the passage of universal healthcare plans like NYHA.

If you or folks in your chapter are interested in potentially attending one of these information sessions, please sign up by completing this form. We are looking forward to meeting with our fellow members and making the case for universal healthcare in the state of New York!