What if Unity's Very Smart People Had NOT Given Away the Store?

Would we be better able to negotiate with Memorial Sloan Kettering?

Unity’s had control of the UFT since its inception. They see themselves as untouchable and utterly unaccountable.

Anyone following these posts with any degree of regularity knows that Unity’s brilliant negotiators decided that we should pay for raises by mortgaging our health care. In 2014, they surrendered 1 billion of our 1.8 billion dollar health fund to purchase a remarkably crappy contract. In 2018, they sold out retiree health care to get a three year contract around cost of living. And of course I always say this, but they agreed to give the city 600 million a year, forever, in exchange for a three year contract.

So even before Municipal Sloan Kettering started making noise about the Anthem Contract, Unity and their friends had pretty much crippled our buying power. And imagine this—another of the deals Unity made entails getting a program to replace Emblem/ Anthem, a program that will cost Eric Adams ten percent less.

So here we stand, faced with losing the services of the most comprehensive cancer care in the city. And we stand here because they want more money. Why should we be in this position at all? There are a few reasons. In 1996, Governor Pataki, who UFT leadership supported, was bullish on deregulating hospital fees. By 1997, he managed to make that happen.

I suppose the idea was for hospitals to compete for our business. You know, you could check prices before having your appendix removed. After all, it may not burst by the time you finish comparing them. Even if it does, you might survive anyway. So why not take the time to compare prices, even though they are listed nowhere I know of?

The whole competition angle is misleading, because just about every hospital I can think of is part of a chain. Where I live, we were near South Nassau Hospital, which is now affiliated with Mt. Sinai, and Mercy Hospital, now affiliated with our good friends at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Most others I know are now part of Northwell.

Regardless, government no longer regulates their prices, so they are free to charge what they like. Hence MSK can say, “Screw you, city employees,” and ask us to just choose a way more expensive health plan. Anthem’s parent company, Elevance, is sitting on billions, with 170 billion operating revenue in 2023. But hey, they can’t just fritter that away paying for our cancer care. Sadly, it’s the American Way.

In fact it appears that we, the UFT, are somehow, partnered with Anthem, via something called the Patient Protection Coalition. Link is here, select “coalition,” and type “patient.” Their statement of purpose can be found here.

THE PURPOSE OF THE ORGANIZATION IS TO SEEK CERTAIN LEGISLATION, DESIGNED TO REDUCE OR ELIMINATE DETRIMENTAL HOSPITAL BILLING PRACTICES WITH RESPECT TO THE PATIENT, HEALTH INSURANCE PLANS AND THE HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY, AS A WHOLE, THROUGH LOBBYING FOR

Well, that’s as far as it seems to go. It would be nice to see the government go back to regulating hospital costs. Here’s a screenshot of who’s in this organization:

I recognize a few names from our mysterious and inscrutable Welfare Fund. Is the Welfare Fund paying Anthem? Is Anthem paying the Welfare Fund? Is the UFT paying or being paid? Who knows? And how much? What we do know is that we are somehow in partnership with a health care company. Isn’t that a conflict of interest?

Could that be a reason we (meaning UFT Unity) don’t support the NY Health Act, even though UFT Delegate Assembly affirmed support for it in 2015, and then again in 2017? Granted, NYHA is not perfect (yet). What do we do, for example, about NY retirees entitled to health care? These things could be worked out, but as far as I know, UFT has not bothered to negotiate solutions.

This could be because they don’t want the Welfare Fund to go the way of the Dodo bird. Fewer patronage gigs mean less power for already floundering UFT Unity.

Regardless, the fact that Unity has given away a great deal of our health funds means we are in a worse position for negotiating not only with MSK, but also with every hospital with a contract in need of renewal. Thus we have to go through this nonsense, and members have to suffer. Fear of losing needed health care is no small matter.

We have no choice to go through this process. Of course creating a New York Health Act that works would be better. Even better would be Medicare for All. I’ve had Medicare for a year now and it’s the best insurance program I’ve ever had. It boggles my mind we can’t expand it.

Of course, people call that socialized medicine, and it’s somehow a dirty word even to some people using and loving Medicare. But if it works for us, if it works at all, why can’t we expand it?

So-called socialized medicine works in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

They all have health care, while we have bankruptcy for catastrophic medical emergency. We can do better.

People say it wouldn’t work, and of course there could be problems. Well, problems beg solutions. If all those other countries have figured it out, it’s very hard for me to fathom why we couldn’t.

An immediate problem, of course, is electing union leadership that will work for us. No one should be giving away our health care, or exchanging it for contracts. We should demand raises that keep up with living, and health care as a human right.

If Eric Adams doesn’t like that, too bad for him. Next year, both he and Unity need to find positions more suited to their talents.

Whatever on earth they may be.

Thanks to Daniel A.