Dear IFA members and all fellow UC Irvine Faculty,
On October 26th, every UC employee received an Open Enrollment notice with new rates for healthcare benefits. The increases in the employee health benefits share are unprecedented and alarming. Costs for healthcare benefits will be going up between 15% and 193% per month, depending on one’s plan and coverage. For example, if you currently pay for Kaiser for yourself and your spouse/partner, your cost will increase by 74% on January 1. Employees who insure themselves and their whole family (spouse/partner + children) through UC Health Savings Plan will see an increase of 171%. Every health benefit plan and coverage tier is affected, and these changes will impact the over 200,000 employees who receive benefits in the UC system.
UCOP presented these changes to UC Unions and the Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA), of which the Irvine Faculty Association is a member, just three days before the start of Open Enrollment, leaving no opportunity for input. Struck by the exorbitant increases, the UC unions and CUCFA pressed for answers. UCOP representatives cited inflation, deferred preventative care during the pandemic, rising drug costs, and clinical workforce shortages as root causes for these price increases. While these are all real issues impacting healthcare costs everywhere, when pushed for details about how prices were negotiated and set for UC employees, UCOP’s answers were unsatisfactory and lacked transparency.
Importantly, the cost to employees of the various healthcare plan options is determined by the insurance company rate increase less the employer share contribution. UC did not provide information about either the rate increase or the employer contribution, so there is no way to tell if UC is paying its share of the increased cost. But other sources indicate that Kaiser’s rate increase was probably about 15% this year[1], which would mean that UC reduced its share of contributions by about 20%.
CUCFA has prepared a letter to UC President Drake protesting the magnitude of these increases in our health benefit costs and UC’s secrecy and lack of transparency in devising and announcing these policies. We encourage you to sign on to this letter, which you can do by clicking on this link: https://bit.ly/ucHealth
If you have any questions about this message or the IFA, you can contact us at irvinefa@gmail.com.
Thank you,
The IFA Board