December
3, 2004
Company institutes annual
out-of-pocket drug ceiling
In a meeting with Time Inc. HR representatives
on November 22, the company officially notified the Guild that it had modified
one of its own health-benefit proposals for 2005. There will be, for the first
time, a $1,000 ceiling on employee out-of-pocket drug costs for Employee Only
coverage, and a $2,000 tops for Employee + 1 or Employee + Family Coverage.
Surprise, surprise!
Although the Guild is happy to have won this
insurance against catastrophic expenses, it is not happy about how the shift
was communicated to employees, and the union will be taking steps to protest
the direct announcement of the action to employees far in advance of the
November 22 consultation with the Guild, and without first informing the Guild.
The modification, which was not identified as
a change from management’s previous proposal, was announced to the staff via
a November 15 e-mail. The e-mail contained no other modifications to the
company’s drastic changes in health benefits, which had been communicated to
the Guild in late August.
The union therefore concluded that no other
changes would be made and that the November 22 “consultation” would be a
sham. That turned out to be correct. The meeting consisted of some statements
by HR about “educating” the employees as “consumers” of health care,
and a literally unbelievable assertion that the doubling of health premiums
and even the higher increases in drug co-pays “were not done for financial
reasons.”
Some insurance against
the insurance changes
Because the truly exorbitant
drug co-pays are staying the same as in Time Inc.’s initial proposal, the
Guild gained an especially important victory in winning the annual drug-cost
ceiling. We had proposed a ceiling on co-pays of $20 per drug purchase, but
the company rejected that and the maximum co-pay will be $40 in 2005.
Unfortunately, that hike will make it much easier for an employee to reach the
drug-cost ceiling.
The Guild’s idea,
conceived by former Unit Chairperson John Shostrom and presented to the
company by New York Guild President Barry Lipton, was to piggy-back the
current out-of-pocket medical maximum with a parallel maximum (though at a
much lower dollar level) on employee drug costs. The company accepted both the
Guild’s concept and its limits of $1,000 and $2,000 mentioned above.
The Guild wishes it could
have beaten back more of the company’s costly increases, but we were
hamstrung by our contract’s “consult” clause, which precludes the union
from negotiating health benefits for
all of us.
The consultations are better than our having no input at all, but they are far worse than our being able to engage in real negotiations for our employees. The consultations occur each year in which there are changes, and the Guild will continue to do all it can to keep any health-cost increase as low as possible.
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12/03/04