Dear UC Riverside faculty,

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Dear President Drake,

On October 26th, every UC employee received an Open Enrollment notice with new rates for healthcare benefits. UCOP presented these changes to UC Unions and the Council of UC Faculty Associations just three days before the start of Open Enrollment, leaving no opportunity for any input.

The increases in the employee health benefits share are unprecedented and alarming. Costs for healthcare benefits will be going up between 15% and 193% per month, depending on one’s plan and coverage. For example, if you currently pay for Kaiser for yourself and your spouse/partner, your cost will increase by 74% on January 1. An employee who insures themselves and their whole family (spouse/partner + children) through UC Health Savings Plan will see an increase of 171%. Every health benefit plan and coverage tier is affected, and these changes will impact the over 200,000 employees who receive benefits in the UC system.

Struck by the exorbitant increases, the UC unions pressed for answers. UCOP representatives cited inflation, deferred preventative care during the pandemic, rising drug costs, and clinical workforce shortages as root causes for these price increases. While these are all real issues impacting healthcare costs everywhere, when pushed for details about how prices were negotiated and set for UC employees, UCOP’s answers were unsatisfactory and lacked transparency.

For example, the cost to employees is determined by the insurance company rate increase less the employer share contribution. UC did not provide information about either the rate increase or the employer contribution, so there is no way to tell if UC is paying its share of the increased cost. But other sources indicate that Kaiser’s rate increase was probably about 15% this year[1], which would mean that UC reduced its share of contributions by about 20%.

We object to these unreasonable increases in our health benefit costs and UC’s secrecy and nontransparency in devising and announcing these policies. Your approach serves not only to degrade and disrespect UC’s academic employees but also contributes to the ongoing severe erosion of UC’s teaching and research mission. You will be hearing more from us, the people in the UC community who are now learning how their lives and livelihoods will be devastated by the poorly warranted policy changes to our healthcare that UCOP has sprung on them.

cc: The UC Regents