MEDICAL provisions written into the new International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) contract are regarded by the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) as a win-win proposition for both parties.
According to the 2014 PMA annual report, the ILWU will continue to enjoy what the University of Chicago's NORC research centre said is one of the "top one per cent most expensive union plans in the nation".
Employers, meanwhile, will continue to enforce administrative changes that have saved the plan US$100 million since January 2013, largely by cracking down on the "rampant waste, abuse and fraud on the part of out-of-network health care providers," reported Newark's Journal of Commerce.
PMA describes the benefits of the medical plan as giving dockers and their families nearly unlimited coverage with only minimal costs to ILWU members. "These benefits will continue, with workers still paying zero premiums, zero deductibles or copays for in-network services and receiving prescription drugs for a $1 copay (or zero if by mail order)."
Those benefits could have been weakened if employers had stood firm on negotiating a compromise with the ILWU in which union members would have had to pick up the costs associated with the so-called Cadillac tax in the Affordable HealthCare Act.
The PMA had said when negotiations began in May 2014 that they could not afford to absorb the millions of dollars of extra costs associated with the Cadillac tax, but employers ultimately gave in to the ILWU's demands and dockworkers will not pay the tax.
"A large number of suspected billings are from a small number of out-of-network providers in southern California," the report stated.
Suspected abuses include billing for services not rendered, producing medical records with identical details for multiple patients, billing for similar procedures on multiple family members on the same day, misclassifying prohibited surgeries in order to gain coverage of unnecessary procedures and offering benefits to patients if they agreed to undergo medically unnecessary procedures.
The ability of employers to maintain Zenith American as the plan's administrator, along with its fraud-prevention partner, TC3 Health, will allow the PMA to continue the process of cracking down on fraudulent claims.
WORLD SHIPPING
25 August 2015 - 21:12
ILWU contract medical benefits good for union, bosses - cuts fraud
MEDICAL provisions written into the new International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) contract are regarded by the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) as a win-win proposition for both parties.
WORLD SHIPPING
25 August 2015 - 21:12
ILWU contract medical benefits good for union, bosses - cuts fraud
This news 4034 hits received.
These news may also interest you