The following email was sent to DOE-employed UFT members and pre-Medicare-eligible retirees on April 29, 2025 from Geof Sorkin, Executive Director of the UFT Welfare Fund:

We wanted to provide you with an update on our health care negotiations and where we are in the process. Having premium-free health care is of utmost importance to us, and we are committed to protecting it at all costs no matter what is happening nationwide.

In the past few years, with all the tumult in the health care industry, it has become harder to find primary care and behavioral health providers in the GHI-CBP plan. We know we would benefit from a larger provider network, including a larger out-of-state network of doctors.

As you know, we’ve been actively looking for bidders who can give us more and better benefits as part of the Municipal Labor Committee. This process, called the negotiated acquisition process, uses the buying power of all MLC unions to ask for bids from insurance companies to find the best plan that will benefit members most.

Here's how the process works:

Step 1: The MLC and the city ask for bids from insurance companies that are interested in competing to provide improved health benefits for all New York City public employees.

Step 2: After the companies submit their bids, the MLC and the city pick two finalists with the best offering.

Step 3: A finalist is chosen to proceed in the process and begins negotiating a plan with the city and the MLC. Using the bid as a base, the MLC pushes to ensure the proposed plan is as good as it can possibly be.

Step 4: Each union in the MLC has the chance to review the final proposed plan and to vote whether or not to support it. Our UFT health care committee will review the plan and make a recommendation to our Delegate Assembly, which will then vote. This vote will decide the UFT’s vote in the MLC.

Step 5: If the proposed plan passes an MLC vote, then city workers and health care providers are educated on the aspects of the plan and the timeline for the implementation. If the plan does not pass an MLC vote, then negotiations can begin again based on feedback from the unions.

Step 6: If the improved plan has been approved, implementation can begin. If the plan was not approved, the city and the MLC will negotiate until they have a new proposed plan and we go back to step 3.

Where we are now:

We are nearing the end of step 2. As you know, the city and the MLC have two finalists left in the negotiated acquisition process, Emblem Health/United Healthcare and Atena. They are in the process of coming back with their best offer for us, and once the better offer is chosen, a true negotiation will begin to create a health care plan that can be brought to a vote.

What are the MLC’s goals for an improved health care plan?

Benefit improvements: We and the rest of the MLC would like to expand our provider network, both in New York State and out of state, keep access to all current hospitals and expand access to more, create new tools to hold health care providers accountable and have copays decrease or at least stay the same — all while maintaining our premium-free high-quality health benefits.

We are identifying the out-of-network doctors used most frequently by our members and will work to bring them into the provider network. Our goal is to expand the provider network so 95% of the providers seen by city workers are in network.

Lock in a longer contract: For the first time ever, the MLC and the city would like to sign a five-year health care contract to help protect us from rising health care costs. We renew our health care contract annually now, but a five-year contract would lock in rates and guarantee we have great benefits for the next five years.

We will keep you posted. Remember, we are the UFT, and as one of the strongest unions in the country, we will never agree to any plan that is not an improvement on our current plan. We want to use this process as an opportunity to address the growing frustrations we face with health care and create a better plan for us all.

See the latest updates on the fight to protect and enhance our premium-free health care »