On January 19th, without any opportunity for public comment, the GIC approved a measure to freeze membership in two health insurance plans to new enrollees, including those from communities joining the GIC on July 1st. The only two such communities are Haverhill and Hingham, totalling just over 5,000 members (the vast majority of which are Haverhill’s employees and retirees). On February 1st, the GIC held a meeting it called an “information session” and invited feedback from attendees from across the state. The meeting, which began with a lengthy powerpoint presentation of information which was mostly already known – and the reason so many had turned out for the meeting in the first place – ended with several people who had signed up to speak, including HEA 2nd V.P. and PEC Chair Anthony Parolisi and Mayor Fiorentini, waiting in the wings. Mayor Fiorentini was able to convince Executive Director Roberta Herman to let him speak for about a minute as she wrapped things up, but by then most people had already left the hall. An updated version of Parolisi’s planned remarks, emailed to the GIC using the form linked below, is at the end of this post.
Despite these obvious setbacks and all experience to the contrary the GIC still claims to be interested in public comments regarding their proposals. They have said that all comments related to these proposals must be received by noon February 3rd!
Please visit www.mass.gov/gic/contact and use the form to email the GIC directly with your concerns.
You can also call the GIC directly at 617-727-2310.
For a list of commissioners, visit www.mass.gov/anf/employee-insurance-and-retirement-benefits/oversight-agencies/gic/gic-commissioners.htmlWhen you do, tell them you object to their decision to freeze Haverhill from the Tufts Navigator and Fallon Health Select Care plans. Below is some information and talking points provided ahead of today’s meeting to help you draft your letter or plan your phone call (2 pages).
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Letter to GIC on behalf of Haverhill PEC (02/01/2017)
Good evening.
My name is Anthony Parolisi. I am a teacher at the Consentino School in Haverhill, 2nd Vice President of the Haverhill Education Association, and am the current chair of the Haverhill Public Employee Committee.
I was one of the several people who were not able to speak at today’s “information meeting” at the Boston Public Library. I arrived, prepared to speak on behalf of thousands of new enrollees from the City of Haverhill and though several cities and towns were able to make their voices heard several times over (and in succession), the most that could be mustered on their behalf was a pitiful 30 seconds by Mayor James Fiorentini at the abrupt end of the poorly planned and executed meeting. I only wish we could have spent more of the time hearing public comments than viewing a powerpoint presentation from the director. Anyone with classroom experience will tell you how much work it can be to plan for day out of the classroom, not including that which will be created for you in your absence. To have gone through such lengths, including a 74-mile round-trip commute, for what feels like nothing leaves me with an uncomfortable feeling. After a long, contemplative drive home from Boston, what follows is a version of what I had been prepared and entitled to say in person. Hopefully it’s articulate enough to be worthy of the commission’s consideration.
Haverhill’s employees did not have a choice to to join the GIC. Mayor Fiorentini was able to unilaterally enter Haverhill into the GIC without collective bargaining of any kind. The municipal employees and retirees, satisfied with the health coverage they had been purchasing for years, objected every step of the way. In the end, the mayor could demonstrate that the cost of moving to the GIC would save enough money for the city and the only thing left to do was to negotiate a mitigation plan to be included in a PEC Agreement.
When I and other labor leaders in Haverhill were notified that the City intended to join the GIC our members were understandably scared and anxious. Will the transition be difficult? Can I keep my doctor or provider? Will the same hospitals be covered? How will mental health coverage be impacted? The questions just kept coming. The PEC not only had to wrestle with the financial implications of this decision but also to do as much as we could to answer our members’ questions. We worked diligently with City Hall to provide a mitigation fund and devise a plan to reimburse our members for as many of the increased out-of-pocket expenses as possible. We interrogated Mayor Fiorentini and his staff during our meetings with them. I exchanged emails late into the night with city’s benefits coordinator Question after question was answered with the same refrain: the GIC had so many choices, everyone would find one that was just right for them. Under our old arrangement, members had just one choice. With the GIC, there would be seven.
Now, here were are, months after Haverhill announced its intention to join the GIC. It’s been months since Haverhill notified its previous health insurance purchaser of its intent to withdraw and now, after there is no turning back, we learn that the commission voted – before this “information meeting” and with no opportunity for public comment – that the thousands of new enrollees from Haverhill will be frozen out of the Fallon Health Select Care and Tufts Navigator plans, in addition to continuing a freeze on the Harvard Pilgrim Independence plan we had already been forced to explain was, regrettably, off limits. Of all the plans to be kept out of, the Tufts Navigator plan – the benchmark of benchmark plans – was routinely held up as the gold standard to those concerned about the transition. For members who were willing to pay almost any cost to continue purchasing health insurance from Blue Cross Blue Shield, it was the Tufts Navigator plan that was always referred to as the closest GIC match. This plan, which was used most often to reassure members will not be accepting new members even though the existence of both plans was a major factor in the decision to join the GIC. If this decision ultimately stands, not only will all of our members have fewer choices than they were led to believe they would have, many will have no real choice at all.
If you don’t know, Haverhill is a city in the Merrimack Valley along the New Hampshire border. We are just thirty miles from Kittery, Maine, and have active employees who live in all three states. Haverhill also has many retirees, both Medicare-eligible and non-Medicare-eligible, living across the country who will have few options available to them, if not only one, when purchasing insurance through the GIC. Ultimately, this decision amounts to a classic bait and switch. The City and its employees were promised one thing and the the GIC has decided to deliver another.
Since the creation of the GIC, which directly oversees the health care plans of thousands of active and retired workers, the costs associated with providing healthcare to those employees as compensation for their labor has gradually and not-so-subtly been shifted away from the employers and back onto the employees. By choosing to increase the deductibles and copays of GIC health care plans, this commission unfairly allows cities and towns across the Commonwealth to balance their budgets by reaching into the wallets of those who work for them. In addition to the communities who have opted into the GIC, other cities and towns may seek to implement plan design changes to match the benchmarks set by this commission. As a result, these dramatic hikes in out-of-pocket expenses will be felt by workers far beyond just the GIC communities themselves.
I had planned to end my remarks by thanking the commission for the opportunity to speak today. Unfortunately, such thanks are not in order. Haverhill’s entry into the GIC had been of to a rocky start even if today’s meeting had gone off without a hitch. Not only are our members resistant to the change, and angry about these new proposals and the manner in which they’ve been “debated” in the public forum, but they are also skeptical that the GIC will have their best interests at heart when it comes to decisions which will affect them in ways perhaps this commission has failed to consider. I hope that I have been able to convince the majority of you that the changes approved by this commission last month will have an unfair and negative impact on workers throughout the Commonwealth. Most importantly, I hope that I have convinced a majority of you to reconsider your decision to further limit the options available to member communities like Haverhill who are joining on July 1 of this year. Haverhill’s decision to join the GIC was based, in no small part, on the wide range of options which were available at the time it was made. To freeze our members out of these plans while at the same time increase their out-of-pocket expenses through higher co-pays and deductibles is to add insult to injury and I implore you to reconsider.
Anthony J. Parolisi
HEA 2nd Vice President/PEC Chair