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Follow the Leader? Will UC Follow CalPERS on Health Costs?

Byuclafaculty

From the Sacramento Bee: The California Public Employees’ Retirement System plans to raise health care premiums to its members by an average of nearly 10 percent next year, one of the biggest increases in recent years. The increase of 9.6 percent would be more than twice as big as the rate hike that took effect for this year. It would have significant implications for health care affordability in California and beyond. CalPERS is a major purchaser of health insurance; it covers nearly 1.3 million public employees, retirees and their family members…


“Wow – that’s pretty high,” said Joanne Spetz, an expert on health care finance at the University of California, San Francisco. She said CalPERS has substantial influence on the health care marketplace, and a 9.6 percent increase suggests price inflation is taking off again. CalPERS raised rates just 4.1 percent for this year, less than half as much. “They tend to push back (on insurers), so if they accepted it, that kind of sets the tone for what the rest of us can expect…”

Full story at: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/06/12/4557662/calpers-to-raise-health-care-premiums.html
Best advice: Don’t get sick:

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Faculty associations address UCOP

Byhigbie

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Spotlight on Speech Codes, 2022

Byadmin

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UCOP Response to CUCFA on Health Options

Byhigbie

In April, the Council of UC Faculty Associations drafted a letter of concern over proposed changes to UC employee health insurance options. Over 2,500 faculty system-wide added their names in support of these concerns. Now we have a response from the UC Office of the President (UCOP): Subject: Health care options letter Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 23:40:06 +0000 From: President at UCOP dot edu To: info at cucfa dot org Dear Professor Hays: Thank you for sharing the Council of UC Faculty Associations’ letter of April 7 to President Napolitano regarding the possible restructuring of healthcare plans available to…

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UCOP Study Shows Decline in Faculty Compensation

Byhigbie

A year ago Colleen Lye and James Vernon, co-chairs of the Berkeley Faculty Association, drew the attention of faculty across the ten campuses of the University of California to the continuing degradation of their pensions, benefits and salaries. Increasing employee contributions to health insurance and pensions were compounding the negative impact of slow salary group, they argued, and retirees faced fewer choices for healthcare. Now UCOP’s own study of total remuneration has confirmed much of their argument. The executive summary of this document contains the following depressing bullet points: Between 2009 and 2014, UC’s total remuneration fell from 2% below…

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The Degradation of Faculty Welfare and Compensation

Byuclafaculty

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Listen to Part of the Regents Afternoon Session of 1-22-2014

Byuclafaculty

As we have noted in numerous prior posts, the Regents refuse to archive their meetings beyond one year.  So we dutifully record the sessions in real time.  Below is a link to part of the afternoon session of Jan. 22.  This segment is mainly the Committee on Educational Policy.  Gov. Brown was in attendance.  We will separately (later) provide links just to certain Brown segments.  But for now, we provide a continuous recording. There was discussion of designating certain areas of UC-Merced as nature reserves, followed by discussion of a new telescope.  The discussion then turned to online ed and…