What is currently being proposed?

The City and the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC) negotiated NYC Employees Preferred Provider Organization (NYCEPPO) to replace the largest provider of health insurance to NYC employees, GHI-CBP, as a response to rising healthcare costs in the private insurance industry. This plan as proposed by the UFT’s healthcare committee needs to be approved by the UFT Delegate Assembly (DA) on September 29th, which will implore UFT representatives in the MLC to also vote in the same manner as the DA on the current proposal.

Who’s going to provide coverage under this new plan?

Under the new plan, EmblemHealth will still provide coverage in 13 NY Downstate counties including NYC, but nationwide coverage will now be provided by United Healthcare.

Will our benefits change under the new plan?

Our benefits largely won’t change on paper, but this is the crux of the issue. United Healthcare is currently under fire for having the worst claims denial rate (32%) in the country. It also does not expand coverage into new areas for employees like in-person mental health services (which would still largely be telehealth as in our current plan). Expanding coverage to more nationwide providers is ultimately meaningless if almost a third of those claims are denied. This would impact your ability to receive care if you are outside of the Downstate 13 as well as impact any dependents outside of the Downstate 13.

Wait, what claims are usually denied?

While it isn’t always consistent and can be case-by-case, their denials often range from cancer treatments and gender-affirming healthcare. According to the NYTimes, United Healthcare has come under fire for the denial of claims being algorithmically generated and has faced class-action lawsuits for their denial algorithm.

But aren’t they legally required to provide coverage like gender-affirming care in NY State?

Legally, yes. However, one of the loopholes United Healthcare has is that under the new plan, it will be self-funded, which means you cannot appeal externally to New York State if you are denied coverage, which is an important tool for many members of our communities who are denied care. This doesn’t just apply for gender-affirming care, but cancer treatments and other life-saving treatments as well. If you wish to receive care outside of the Downstate 13, you are essentially at the mercy of United’s system.

But I saw we had $0 co-pays at NYC Health and Hospitals (H+H). Isn’t that a good thing?

This would be incredible if this was met with increased funding and a plan to expand our public hospital system. Right now H+H is in a staffing and facility crisis that’s only going to get worse. H+H’s funding largely comes from Medicaid, which has now been slashed thanks to Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. As the city is not making up the difference in funding, it is now at the mercy of receiving funding from private insurance, which will create lags and inequities in an already stretched and unequal system. It is not uncommon for one ER physician to have 50 patients to care for. And we saw during COVID patients largely from poorer and black and brown communities who have no choice but to rely on H+H suffer and die at higher levels when that system was at a breaking point. Now, the current proposal is essentially incentivizing over 3 million city workers to use that system with no plan to reach that capacity. This sets up a recipe for a complete disaster in H+H and will only fuel the argument that public health does not work.

But isn’t this the best we can negotiate?

Anyone who tells you that you have no choice but to vote yes or else bad things will happen is, frankly, browbeating you and engaging in a classic bullying tactic. No tentative agreement, union contract, or otherwise is above criticism. No one is obligated to vote yes or no on any agreement until they have heard all of the best possible arguments and made their decision for themselves. The strength of any agreement is made on the basis of how hard the demands achieved were fought for in the first place. Under the current proposal, we have made little improvement on our current coverage while potentially opening up risks in other areas of coverage. That alone is a reason to go back to the drawing board.

The speed of negotiations is not justified. This deal is our current mayor Eric Adams and UnitedHealthcare’s/EmblemHealth’s deal in order to use denials and delays through the self-funded plan to achieve $1 billion in savings. Because this plan would be locked in for 5 years, any changes made to our healthcare would be pushed off for future negotiators to decide, further kicking the problem down the road instead of aiming to solve the problem of rising healthcare costs once and for all. Negotiations should resume and decisions should be made by next year, and delegates should have ample time to see the full contract and to make the best-informed decision possible.

What will happen to our benefits if the Delegate Assembly votes no?

Those who have GHI-CBP will still have their same coverage as before with no change. You will not lose your health insurance, nor do we lose our leverage at the negotiating table. It simply means they have to try again, and we will go through the same process as before. To be clear, the UFT is not the only union represented in the MLC, but it holds the biggest share of representation next to DC37. While there is a likelihood this proposal could still pass without UFT, DC37 does not often vote against UFT, and it would be even less likely to pass if a movement to vote no on this proposal spreads to our city union siblings. A no vote would send a big message to negotiators in the city and the healthcare companies that we will not do business unless these concerns are unequivocally addressed, especially if this is backed with grassroots support. Retirees in the UFT proved this kind of activism is possible by building protests against the proposed privatization of their healthcare benefits through a Medicare Advantage plan, which has nearly been defeated.

But what changes can we win, really? I haven’t seen our union do much and the city and private companies are so powerful.

It’s absolutely true there are powerful forces against the working class of this city, and unfortunately our unions have not had a good track record of pushing back against the real losses we have sustained. This is why this isn’t simply a campaign to vote no, but to connect this with the fight to elect new leadership that is accountable to the rank-and-file in the UFT and all of our city unions. But we can also take the lead of the retirees and build a protest movement now to demand positive changes that guarantee in-person mental health services, gender-affirming healthcare, reduce deductibles and co-pays, expand providers and coverage, and keep our premium-free healthcare. 

But in our opinion, under our current system of private insurance, we are always going to be in this cycle of threats, negotiating and defense our healthcare, which is why we believe in our union using their support of the New York Health Act (NYHA), which would make NY State the single insurer of healthcare, as leverage in current negotiations while campaigning for it on the streets. This is something our union has voted on in the DA in 2015 and 2017, but has not acted upon it since. Right now, Henry Garrido, executive director of DC37, and Michael Mulgrew, president of UFT, are playing into the hands of Eric Adams and his rotten partnerships with by ramming this deal through the membership, and are cited by legislators as the reason why they won’t pass NYHA as they have chosen to negotiate opaque deals over what many their rank-and-file on other unions have been on the record for supporting. “If the city’s biggest unions don’t want it, why should we?” If we’re going to finally push back Adams’s and Trump’s attacks on our healthcare system, we must build a grassroots movement for NYHA and push our leadership to act!

If you agree with this statement, and are a chapter leader or delegate in the UFT, sign this! 

If you agree with this and are not a chapter leader or delegate, or are in another union affected by this tentative agreement from the MLC, sign anyway! Send this to your union leadership and all of your coworkers and tell them to vote no!