As city workers, our health care is one of our most valued benefits. Each year, we work hard to improve our benefits. But health care costs have risen astronomically, and lately more and more doctors have stopped taking some of our plans. Our member-led UFT Health Care Committee meets regularly and reports your frustrations with fewer doctors in the network and rising co-pays.

We can all agree that our health benefits need a reset. For the past two years, the city and the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC), the umbrella coalition of public sector unions to which the UFT belongs, have been involved in a negotiated acquisition process for a new in-service and pre-Medicare retiree health care plan, which we hope will be the reset we need. The new plan that emerges from this process must provide better benefits and reduce costs for city taxpayers.

A negotiated acquisition process allows for a more flexible and tailored approach than a simple request for proposal process does. Negotiated acquisitions allow for discussions and negotiations with selected health care companies to refine proposals and reach mutually agreeable terms, ultimately leading to a better contract.

The city and the MLC narrowed down the field of contract bidders to two finalists. Recently, EmblemHealth/UnitedHealthcare was selected as the company with the most promise when it comes to improving our benefits, widening our network of providers and locking in premium-free care. Now we have moved to the next phase of the process, where the city and the unions will negotiate with EmblemHealth/UHC to create a final version of its plan. Yes, EmblemHealth, which offers the current GHI Comprehensive Benefits Plan, is still in the mix, but it is coming back with better benefits now since it knows that the city and the unions are willing to change to another insurer.

After the city, the MLC and EmblemHealth/UHC have hashed out a final proposed plan, that plan will be reviewed by all the city unions before it is brought to a vote in the MLC. The UFT will bring the proposed plan to the UFT Health Care Committee for it to review and make a recommendation to the Delegate Assembly. UFT delegates will then review the plan and vote at the DA whether to support it.

We have clear goals in these negotiations: expand our provider network, both in New York State and out of state; improve our access to mental health professionals; keep our access to all current in-network hospitals and expand access to more; create new tools to hold health care providers accountable; and have co-pays decrease or at least stay the same. We also, for the first time ever, want to lock in our premium-free health benefits for five years instead of renewing our health care contract on a yearly basis as we do now.

You may be asking, why does the MLC want to help the city achieve savings? Our plan is premium free for us only because the city of New York pays our premiums. Saving the city money staves off the prospect that the city will impose premiums on our health care in the future. New York City taxpayers pay the city’s expenses, and health care is a large city expense. Savings for city taxpayers are savings for all of us. But we are doing better than that: We are using this opportunity to negotiate better health benefits than we now have.

How is it possible to get something better at a lower price tag for our city? The answer is our buying power. The MLC represents roughly 390,000 city workers, so health insurance providers are eager for our business. To win the contract, they offer competitive prices and benefits that they wouldn’t give to smaller groups or businesses.

Negotiations with EmblemHealth/UHC are now underway, so you can expect updates throughout this process. We hope to have a new health plan in place by January 2026, but only if the UFT, its health care committee and the DA all vote to support the proposed plan.

New York City is the last big city in the country that provides premium-free health care to its employees. We can be proud that the MLC has been able to work with different city administrations over the decades to maintain our quality, premium-free benefits. We won’t give up now.