Download pictures from today's meeting

The message from labor is direct. The Aon report the committee relies on is built on questionable assumptions and missing information, and it paints an incomplete picture of what is actually driving health plan costs. Workers should not foot the bill for that again and again. This is another report that woefully fails to meet the moment or help us reduce costs and manage the plan.

The stakes reach well past the committee room. Affordability is already breaking down for residents across the state. On the West Health-Gallup healthcare scorecard, New Jersey ranks a D+ on affordability, with 23 percent of residents saying they avoided a doctor-recommended procedure, lab test, or evaluation in the past year because they couldn't afford it, and 18 percent reporting that they or a family member skipped a dose or pill to save money. Rate hikes rubber-stamped on bad data push more working families toward exactly those choices.

"We cannot make honest, forward-thinking decisions on plan design or premium rates if we are not told the whole truth and given accurate data. We received another report that doesn’t show its math, and we have conflicting real-time data indicating that the recommended rates for certain plans deserve a lot more scrutiny. We want transparency, real governance reform, and cost controls so labor and management can jointly make smart reforms instead of managing an ongoing annual crisis." Adam Liebtag, CWA Local 1036 President and Plan Design Committee member said.

"Health care in New Jersey has been consolidated into a few large private health care systems and one dominant private health insurance company,” said Patrick Nowlan, Executive Director, Rutgers AAUP-AFT and PDC Member. “All of them are technically non-profits, but they pay their executives millions of dollars each year. The overall system is rigged against the insured, the patients, and taxpayers.

Money in politics has brought us to the current state of rapidly rising premiums and expected double-digit rate increases each year. It doesn't have to be this way and we can't become numb to this trend. It's bad for our health. Our unions have put on the table a number of ideas to control the cost of health care and provide security to our members, their families and our communities of patients and tax payers. We call on state management to have the courage to stand up to these private corporations driving our members and state residents into health care insecurity."

“Every year, Aon makes recommendations to raise the State Health Benefits Plan rates and everyone is just supposed to take them at their word,” said Steve Tully, AFSCME Council 63 Director. “This is a flawed system that needs to be reformed and the rates recommended by Aon and its analysis are part of the problem. They make no sense, are based upon guesses, not data, and these repeated failures are beyond exasperating!”

Tully continues: “The people who pay the price for the lack of transparency, access to data and methodology, and these continuing failures are the public employees and taxpayers. We need transparency, accountability, and real governance reform if we are ever going to put the interests of workers and the taxpayers above insurance companies.”

The union's case:

• The data doesn't hold up. Today's meeting again showed the Aon report resting on questionable data and missing information. The report lacks transparency on the baseline assumptions underlying projections, demonstrating the need for more detail about the methodology, data, and rationale.
• Money keeps getting left on the table. Years of savings proposals have been ignored, every time at workers' expense.
• Good ideas never get a fair hearing. Proposals the union has raised for years, including reference-based pricing, still haven't gotten adequate consideration.
• The fix is straightforward. Transparency and accountability, real governance reform, and cost controls that focus on the corporation profiting from our healthcare needs.

About CWA DISTRICT 1:
CWA District 1 represents over 170,000 active and retired members across New York, New Jersey, and New England in public service, telecommunications, media, healthcare, manufacturing, and other sectors, including roughly 70,000 members in New Jersey.

About AFSCME: 

AFSCME Council 63 represents over 20,000 public and private sector workers in New Jersey, including state, county, municipal, higher education, and school employees.

About AAUP and AFT:

AAUP-AFT represents 10,000 academic workers at Rutgers University and NJIT. Overall, AFT represents over 45,000 members from pre-K through higher education and in health care across the state of New Jersey.