Local 34, Wages & Benefits

Best Practices success!

Recently, members of the Yale University Health Services (YUHS) Joint Departmental Committee (JDC) formally presented recommendations to the senior staff in Health Services to improve access to patient care.

To the delight of the Local 34 representatives making the presentation, Dr. Paul Genecin, the Director of the Yale Health Plan and the Executive Sponsor of the YUHS JDC, endorsed the recommendations and has committed resources that will help to implement new practices.

Among other things, the senior staff has agreed to establish a taskforce of C&Ts, departmental managers, doctors, and other staff members to come up with solutions to the access problems members identified. This taskforce will report to the JDC.This project is just one step in a longer process by C&Ts, management, and other staff members in the JDC to make YUHS the best health care system possible.

“For me,” says Gloria Lopez, Co-Chair of the Health Services JDC, “the most rewarding part of this process is seeing C&Ts and management coming together in a situation where we’re being taken seriously — where management is not talking down to us or dictating to us, but listening to our opinions and ideas.

Healthcare

Most plans, even at strong unionized workplaces, require increasingly large, monthly employee co-payments. Thousands of grocery store clerks in Southern California recently went on strike over this key issue. Their employers—huge grocery chains—are asking workers to begin paying $5-$15 per week towards health insurance while proposing to cut benefits by 50% and institute a “two-tier” system of health insurance for newer hires.

We have been able to maintain Yale Health Plan coverage without any premium payment by employees.

Local 34 employees are working senior management through Best Practices to improve access to patient care through Yale University Health Services. Together, we are working to improve our health coverage. See sidebar.

Useful Links

Yale University Health Services: Staff Resources

Yale University Human Resources: A Guide to your Medical Benefits
(log in through Central Authentication Service with your NET ID and password)

New Pharmacy Deductible for Faculty and Staff, July 1, 2006

(Adapted from “Yale Health Online”)

Effective July 1, 2006, the prescription deductible for individual faculty and staff increases to $200 per person, up from the current $150 per person.

The Family maximum (deductible) increases to $600per year, up from $450 per year.

After the deductible, Pharmacy coinsurance remains at 20% up to a $700 individual out-of-pocket maximum. (This is based on a long-standing $2,500 limit on expenses. 20% of $2,500 equals $500. Therefore, the $200 deductible plus the $500 out-of-pocket maximum equals $700.)

Pharmacy expenses over $700 per individual are covered at 100%. The cap on Pharmacy reimbursement remains at $25,000 per person/per year.

Changes to Healthcare Benefits in the 2003 Contract

Yale Health Plan Prescription Deductible and Outpatient Mental Health Reimbursement

Both the annual deductibles that we pay for our prescription coverage and the reimbursements that we receive for outpatient mental health will go up twice during this contract. (This has no effect on our inpatient mental health coverage.)

These changes in deductibles and mental health coverage affect only those of us who are enrolled in the Yale Health Plan. If you have chosen a different insurance plan, your benefits under that plan are not affected.

The changes reflect the fact that both prescription and mental health costs are rising rapidly. The cost of prescription drugs has been going up at a rate of more than 10% a year. Despite these changes, neither our prescription deductibles nor our mental health reimbursements have been changed in more than a decade. These changes are cost neutral, meaning that, as a group, the amount that we will gain in mental health reimbursements will equal the amount we will pay in increased prescription deductibles.

The co-pay on Yale Health Plan prescriptions, once the deductible has been met, continues to be 20% of total cost.

Most fundamentally, we have been able to maintain Yale Health Plan coverage without any premium payment by employees. Most plans, even at strong unionized workplaces, require increasingly large, monthly employee co-payments.