Over the last 10 years, the cost of health insurance has risen dramatically. In the summer of 2000, the UO and the GTFF reached an agreement where the UO would pay the vast majority of the health insurance costs which had risen to ~$1 million. Today, the health insurance plan costs closer to $5.5 million.
Health insurance reform will also have a big impact on the future of GTFF health insurance (see here for more on that issue) and both parties expect the cost of our health insurance plan to keep rising.
The UO has proposed that we form a joint committee that would be tasked with examining the GTFF health care plan with an eye toward finding some cost savings and/or looking at ways to alter benefits in the new health care climate.
The GTFF has rejected this proposal as unnecessary. We have been in bargaining with the UO over health care since June 2009 and they could have/can propose any change to the health care plan that they would like. They have not made any such proposals.
We believe that the UO would like to form this committee so that they can suggest changes to our plan that they are very reluctant to make in public during bargaining. Moreover, we suspect that they believe that GTFs assigned to a committee might be easier to sway than the GTFs who volunteer to be on the bargaining team.
Because there is no real upside to us participating on such a committee, we have rejected the UO's proposal.
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