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Concerns over GHI-HIP merger
Jun 26, 2008 1:09 PM
Resolutions
The impending change in the HIP-GHI health organization from nonprofit to for-profit status — to be called Emblem Health, Inc. — prompted delegates to approve a resolution raising concerns that a for-profit structure would compromise GHI and HIP’s longstanding commitment to city employees by letting health care deteriorate.
The resolution also raised the possibility a for-profit would overcompensate top executives, cut back on health-care spending and even flip management and control to an entirely new, money-making entity.
Delegates voted to work with the Municipal Labor Committee and “call on the governor and state Legislature to distribute a fair share of the conversion … to New York City employees and retirees, who are the real stakeholders in the companies.”
The DA also called on the state superintendent of insurance “to defer any decision on approving a proposed conversion unless there are guarantees that any successor organizations maintain quality, affordable health care for working families,” and that city employees and retirees “share in the proceeds of any for-profit conversion.”
A substitute resolution offered from the floor by John Powers, chapter leader at Brooklyn’s Liberation HS, would have mandated the UFT to urge the state insurance superintendent to flatly reject the proposed for-profit conversion as a give-away to private owners. Powers’ resolution also called for more discussion, including organizing educational and public hearings on “reforming GHI and HIP, while preserving their not-for-profit status.”
Aviation HS Chapter Leader Gerry Frohnhoefer agreed that it was too early to let GHI-HIP go for-profit, that leadership in the business world today operates “without consideration for the members, the owners or the participants,” and instead urged exploring ways to make HIP-GHI “a semi-public corporation.”
Speaking against the substitute motion, Vice President for Career and Technical Education High Schools Michael Mulgrew said Powers’ resolution flew in the face of a strategy agreed to by the Municipal Labor Committee. Adopting the substitute would break that united front and “pull the UFT out of the MLC in terms of how we deal with health care if we go out on our own.”
Others suggested that the issue wasn’t for-profit versus not-for-profit, but whether the merged group’s move would guarantee it “spend what needs to be spent” on quality, affordable and accessible health care. The substitute failed to win consideration, and the original motion passed by a wide margin.
