 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Health Insurance Woes Many Post employees are experiencing serious cases of Sticker Shock as they consider their options under this year’s health insurance plan. Despite Peggy Schiff’s recent e-mail assuring employees that premiums are going up a modest 5 percent to 7 percent (about equal to the average increase for healthcare premiums nationally this year), they are finding that actual monthly health insurance costs are going up a sickening 40 percent or more. Here is the lowdown. First, keep in mind that under the terms of our labor contract, the Guild does not bargain with Post management over the details of the health insurance plan. Instead we have bargained a longstanding guarantee that whatever health insurance options The Post makes available to its managers and other exempt employees will also be made available to the approximately 1,250 of us who are covered by the Guild contract. That guarantees that we will not get stuck with a second-rate health plan while managers get a Gold plated version. The Guild does have the right to “meet and confer” with Post management over the details of the plan, and it does so regularly. (In early October, Guild co-chairs Darlene Meyer and Rick Weiss, along with Ann Marie Ditchey, Chris Lee, Chris Schoppa and Guild representative Joe Kahraman met with Peggy, Trish Dunn, Jay Kennedy and Washington Post Company health czar Anne McDaniel to push for improvements and cost savings, based in part on the employee survey the Guild conducted a few months earlier.) But in recent years, the health plan has become a supertanker that has become very hard to turn around because it is being written to cover more and more Post Company divisions and subsidiaries. That gives those of us at the newspaper less clout over the process. At the same time, The Post has decided to shift a growing proportion of the company’s healthcare costs onto employees’ shoulders. So while many employees used to pay 10 percent to 20 percent of the annual, per-person premium (the company paid the rest), most employees this year must pay fully 30 percent of that premium. (Worst hit: part-timers working 15 to 24 hours a week, who pay fully 50 percent.) So not only are premiums going up, but the proportion of those premiums that we have to bankroll is going up. That’s why many employees are having to swallow cost increases five or six times more than the advertised 7 percent. Consider an employee who has been at The Post for at least two years (more recent hires have already been paying higher rates), is covered by the Aetna Health Fund(chosen by 51 percent of all employees in 2007) and earns $75,000 a year. That employee would have paid $3,241 in premiums for family coverage in 2007, but will pay $4,161 in 2008. That’s an increase of $920 a year, or a 28 percent increase. Put differently, that $920 increase amounts to a 1.2 percent salary cut. The same employee in either the Kaiser or Aetna HMO would have paid about $3,132 last year, but will pay about $3,966 this year, an increase of about $834. That’s a 27 percent increase. Many lower paid employees will see much bigger percentage increases. For single employees earning between $30,000 and $65,000 who are in the Health Fund, annual premium costs will go from $802 this year to $1,144 in 2008, an increase of $342. That’s a 43 percent increase, equivalent to a pay cut of more than 1 percent if you are earning around $30,000.The same employee in one of the HMOs would have paid about $636 in 2007 but will pay about $893 in 2008, an increase of about $257. That’s a 40 percent increase. Why is health insurance so expensive? In part it is due to national economic forces far bigger than the Washington Post, and in part it is due to some quirks of Washington Post employees. For example, despite the recent buyouts that eliminated scores of older employees from the health rolls, healthcare payouts for Post employees overall will be higher than ever this year, according to data from the first six months and projections through the end of the year. Post management has concluded that this increase is due in large part to newspaper employees’ continuing overuse of brand name prescription drugs instead of generics (at the newspaper, 50 percent of prescriptions are brand name, compared to 44 percent for The Washington Post Company’s other divisions) and newspaper employees’ overuse of out-of-network doctors (17 percent of claims paid were out of network, compared to 13.5 percent for The Washington Post Company’s other divisions). Also contributing to this year’s high expenditures: If current trends continue, then a record number of Post employees will be diagnosed with serious, high-cost illnesses this year. While no one begrudges this expense – these are precisely the people for whom the safety net of insurance is most aimed at -- the Guild has expressed concerns that this burden may fall on fewer and fewer of us as The Post’s health insurance options grow increasingly unattractive. After the popular PPO option was eliminated last year, for example, a record number of employees (more than 16 percent) opted out of Post insurance altogether. Since opt-outs tend to be younger and healthier, that shift undermines the concept of shared risk and increases the cost burden on the remaining pool of employees. The Guild has favored a number of changes to make the health plan more broadly appealing, including a more progressive spread of premiums so the lowest paid employees would get the smallest hit, but The Post has chosen to increase the burden on these employees instead. Indeed, Trish Dunn and Peggy Schiff indicated that the Post intends to increase employee premium share (which, again, will hit the lower-paid employees more) for 2009 and beyond. The Guild is concerned that the much-touted "freedom of choice" that The Post says is its guiding principle for health plans is devolving to a choice of health insurance or no health insurance, especially for lower-paid and part-time employees. Some not-so-fun facts about Washington Post employee health: The seven diseases that cost us the most, ranked in order: 1) High blood pressure · In the first 8 months of 2007, 33 percent have blown through the entire amount of money in that fund and have hit the “donut hole” where they must pay for medical expenses out of their own pockets. (No data on how many of these have gone on to spend their entire out-of-pocket deductible, and so are now covered by the plan’s emergency backup fund of last resort.) · In the first 8 months of the year, 12 percent of employees had not spent any of their Fund. (Recall that unspent Fund money can be rolled over for future years.) Given the added burden of healthcare expenses this year, it will be more important than ever that Guild-covered employees pull together in the coming year to assure decent wage increases in the new labor contract that we will be negotiating just one year from now. If you are not a member, now is the time to join. The Guild works for you. Help build the Guild. To join or to get more information, contact any of the officers
or stewards listed below, or call the Guild office at 202 785-3650. 2007-2009 Post Guild Unit Officers & Stewards Darlene Meyer 334-7007 JoAnn Goslin 334-7217 Rick Weiss 334-5514 Stephen Richardson 334-7730 Ann Marie Ditchey 334-5744 Sandi Randall 334-6938 Andreia Douglas 334-6353 David Robie 334-4313 Robert Pierre 334-5607 Craig Hall (202) 306-6507 Dita Smith 334-7517 Chris Schoppa 334-6954 Alan Lengel 334-5556
|