Word: huctw
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...larger picture. Full, good quality coverage is available at relatively affordable premiums for nearly all students, faculty, staff and retirees, and their dependents. At the same time, our chances for averting a health care meltdown are no better on the Harvard campus than elsewhere in American society. For HUCTW's 3,600 members, health insurance is already expensive--the average support staff member's 15% share of premiums is costing her more than $600 this year, on an annual salary of $23,000. We can not afford several more years of uncontrolled inflation in premiums. Meanwhile, efforts at consistent, coherent...
Perhaps the central challenge in health care policy today is how to control costs and discourage inflation without negative impact on the quality or availability of health care. HUCTW leaders and Harvard administrators have spoken together since their earliest meetings about the urgent need for everyone within the Harvard community to participate in serious work on this issue. The first Agreement between HUCTW and Harvard, reached in 1989, called for intense joint work in a committee involving faculty, administrators and staff, on "issues such as managed care, quality of care, and cost containment measures." Within the past few years, many...
...that work on this issue consistently. Occasionally in the past three years, consultants have visited the campus, usually peddling unattractive plans which pretend to "quality-conscious" cost containment, while actually reducing benefits or limiting access. The University's participation in the Joint Health Care Advisory Committee, created in the HUCTW Agreement, has been reluctant and unproductive...
Harvard administrators had occasionally considered such a change in the past, but rejected the idea when consultants recommended introducing it with a higher deductible, and therefore a greater cost to patients, than the old Blue Cross plan. In the end, because HUCTW leaders have insisted on complete consultation about any large or small changes in health care offerings, we had a detailed understanding of the new plan and accepted it. As instituted, HealthFlex Blue charged an out-of-network deductible identical to the regular, annual deductible under the old Blue Cross/ Blue Shield. In other words, theoretically, no costs...
...editorial calls on the University to grant the HUCTW a four percent pay increase. The University has expressed its willingness to do just that. Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs