Thursday, June 6, 2013

Gazette: Some Montgomery school staff unhappy with health care changes

Some Montgomery school staff unhappy with health care changes
By Jen Bondeson, Gazette, 6/5/13

Excerpts:

To save money on administrative fees, the school system is dropping UnitedHealthcare and adding Cigna, effective Jan. 1, 2014, Richard C. Johnstone, director of benefits for the school system, told members of the Montgomery County Board of Education Thursday.

(...)

The school system did not want to tell anyone of the change before the school board approved it, Johnstone said. The school system met with the three unions that represent employees prior to deciding on the change, and they were supportive, he said.

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5 comments:

  1. unions screwing over their own

    ReplyDelete
  2. As the spouse of a teacher, I have to say that compared to what most private employers offer the health benefits are ridiculously generous. [The benefit plans are publicly available on the MCPS website.]

    The fact that the health vendor is changing does not necessarily mean that the plan design (e.g. copayments) is changing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I wonder if Kaiser and any other plan offered by MCPS will change too?

    ReplyDelete
  4. You get what you pay for. As per usual, it's not only what they did, it's how they did it. Unions screwing over their own! "So" (as Josh likes to start with)here we go again. We need a plan as to how to get rid of the present teacher union and the BOE.

    ReplyDelete
  5. They probably didn't want staff trying to figure out the impact of the change. As best I can tell from the company's website (no link to any specific teacher plan has been provided), some practices are not covered, including, sadly, one I've been with most of my career. Their pushback, of course, will be that we retain the option to continue seeing that practice under the out-of-network provisions. That solution, however, is a net reduction in benefits. So, to our union friends, why did you agree to this change?

    ReplyDelete

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