BY CYNTHIA LEE
UCLA Today Staff
When Open Enrollment begins next month, University
of California employees will be seeing higher costs for health
care in 2003, but also new options from UC Benefits to help
employees cope with them.
Affecting workers in both the public and private
sectors, the nationwide increase in health-care costs is being
propelled by higher costs for prescription drugs, mergers and
closures among insurance carriers and many other factors, according
to UC Benefits administrators. The state of California, for
example, is experiencing a 25% jump in the cost of its CalPERS
HMO plan for 2003.
Initially, when medical-plan providers submitted
bids to UC, they quoted prices reflecting increases of 20-34%,
administrators said. But after months of tough negotiations,
UC was able to keep cost increases to 16-22%. In addition, the
UC Board of Regents specifically designated that part of a recent
increase in nonresident tuition be used to help offset employees’
health-benefit costs.
“We were bracing for a lot worse than
what our final costs turned out to be,” said Lydia Oller,
manager of benefits at UCLA’s Campus Human Resources.
“Costs are up, but we do have more choices.” And
in two areas, supplemental life insurance and an employee-paid
disability plan, employees’ costs have actually dipped
for 2003.
Detailed, personalized information on the plans
is being mailed out by UC Benefits before the Open Enrollment
period, from Nov. 1 through Nov. 30.
Here are highlights of some of the changes:
-
UC will continue to pay the
majority of health-care premium costs for employees —
approximately two-thirds of the total monthly premium, with
employees paying the remaining one-third.
-
UC will make additional contributions
— transitional allowances — to the monthly premiums
of employees who earn $40,000 or less to help keep premium
costs affordable. For 2003, these allowances will range from
$8 to $23, depending on employees’ coverage.
-
For the first time in many
years, UC will not be able to offer a fully employer-paid
HMO plan.
-
Employees will be able to
sign up for a health-care reimbursement account allowing them
to set aside pretax dollars to pay for such medical, dental
and vision expenses as co-payments, deductibles, prescription
drugs, eyeglasses and orthodontia. “Typi-cally, employees
cannot qualify for tax deductions of medical expenses on their
income tax,” Oller said. “This provides them a
way to do just that.”
-
Employees will continue to
benefit from 100%-employer-paid dental and vision coverage
and a 100%-employer-paid retirement plan.
-
A new rate category will be
established to allow employees who are single parents to pay
lower premiums.
-
Blue Cross of California,
which will replace the UC Care medical plan, will offer two
plans: a point-of-service plan and a preferred-provider organization
plan. To explain the changes, Blue Cross recently mailed out
information to UC employees and annuitants currently enrolled
in UC Care, High Option, High Option Supplement to Medicare
or Core plans. For more information, call (888) 209-7975 or
go to www.bluecrossca.com/uc.
A Campus Benefits Fair to further explain employees’
choices will be held Nov. 4 from 11:30 a.m.-4 p.m. at the Faculty
Center. Blue Cross will make three 20-to-30-minute repeat presentations
about its new plans at 1 p.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. A Q&A will
be included. For health- care employees, UCLA Healthcare will
host an Open Enrollment Fair on Nov. 5 from 2:30 p.m.-5 p.m.
at the MOB Conference Room at UCLA-Santa Monica Hospital and
from 7:30 a.m.-1:30 pm at the cafeteria vending area in the
UCLA Medical Center. Also, health-care employees are urged to
attend an information session on the changes. For more details,
go to: http://hr.healthcare.ucla.edu/OE2003highlights.htm.
