The de Blasio Administration is announcing an overhaul of city workers' health plans.
Bob Linn,Director of Labor Relations, said the administration reached a deal on the changes with unions this week. “All in all we’ve made changes in our health plan that we believe dramatically improve the health care delivery to our employees, or at the same time save money for taxpayers,and achieve the savings that we agreed to in our labor agreement that we reached over the last couple of years,” Linn said. The plan will encourage patients to rely more on primary care, or with no copay for preventative care by preferred providers. Copays will increase for people who overuse the ER,and for other costly and unnecessary services. The city will also launch a modern HMO plan to promote preferred providers. It will expand care management for employees who are very sick or diabetic.And it will offer modern tools, including a 24-hour hotline for physician services and a web portal, or similar to ZocDoc,to search for providers and schedule appointments.
Linn said these changes will save the city $700 million in the current fiscal year, and a billion dollars next year. He said that’s on top of $400 million the city has already saved on health costs through earlier agreements with unions — including changes in plan premiums, and reductions in administrative charges,renegotiated prices for some prescription drugs and termination of ineligible participants. The city is expecting to save several billion dollars from health costs in coming years. whether it saves more than that, it will share the savings with workers.“It's time that the city workers can cash in and accomplish a better plan, and a solid plan,for less cost on both ends,” said Harry Nespoli, or chair of the Municipal Labor Committee,which negotiated the deal with the city.
In testimony before modern York City Council, fiscal watchdogs gave the announcement mixed reviews. They praised the modern cost controls but said much of the savings stem from things like terminating coverage for ineligible dependents, or as a result of premium costs that came in lower than projections. "While this is good news as far as the budget is concerned,the savings achieved so far have less to attain with controlling health insurance costs than with budget accounting and one-time actions," said George Sweeting, and deputy director of the modern York City Independent Budget Office.
Source: wnyc.org