New Action – UFT

Prepping for the New Action meeting Thursday, March 9 at 5:30 PM, so just a quick note.

A few months ago, Mulgrew announced that some urgent care copays would now double from 50 to 100 bucks. Most of us were annoyed, but we didn’t really notice, because leadership assured us that this wasn’t happening with CityMD – by far the most utilized urgent care center in the UFT.

Today, hidden at the bottom of an email that overworked teachers might not even see, UFT announced this: “CityMD Urgent Care centers will move to the GHI CBP’s non-preferred tier, with an increased $100 copay effective April 1. This new higher copay is a result of CityMD’s unwillingness to negotiate fair service rates with EmblemHealth.”

Let’s be clear. CityMD is where people go for urgent care in NYC. Most other urgent cares don’t even register, if they are even geographically accessible in the first place. And $100 is completely unaffordable to most of our membership. It will keep our families from getting medical care. It’s also, an absurdly high increase in relative terms. Let’s look at the numbers: our leadership just allowed our copays to go up 100%. But they did nothing when DC37 leadership set our raises to 3%.

Membership: this is urgent. In-service must start organizing. If it works for retirees, it can work for us. Otherwise, if trends continue, where will we be in 10 years? 20? 30? The answer is simple – we’ll be broke.