December 2000 Trust Talk

Addressing Your Concerns

Do you have questions about your benefits? Some members who took the survey did, and Trust customer service will respond personally to all members who gave names and contact information in the survey. However, many others asked the same questions, but did not give contact information…we’d like to address the most-frequently asked questions here. Call Trust customer service or send us an e-mail if you have any other benefit questions you don’t see addressed here.

Medical/Other Coverage

We hear you, and many of you have concerns about your medical plans, and the choices available to you as of the last open enrollment period. We don’t offer medical. Or prescription. Or mental health. We’re forwarding your comments to the JHCC that does deal with all of these health care issues.

What the Trust Does

The Trust is a collectively bargained group that is run by Union leaders appointed to the Board of Trustees. Trustees come from the Unions we serve, and steer the Trust. The funding is negotiated by the Unions during their collective bargaining sessions with the State. At the last round of bargaining, the funds obtained are enough to maintain current benefits. So, to make any improvements to your plans, the Trust could pass on the cost to you or completely spend down our unrestricted reserves. We’ll be doing the latter, because all the money we have available is committed to improving and maintaining member benefits. After all, providing high-quality benefits and services to you is the whole purpose of the Trust.

We try to get the best rates and best coverage possible by listening to you and then thoroughly researching the options available. We selected the current carriers based on this process, and will make any changes using this process, but need to live within our limited means. And while the Trust has a lot of weight when contracting with insurance providers because we have 46,000 members we serve, we can’t control market-wide skyrocketing costs for dental and vision coverage (remember how much health care jumped last enrollment?). Well, the bad news is that the benefits we provide will experience large inflationary increases next year. The good news is that we will still work to insulate you from the out-of-control market costs without any takeaways on benefit level. For the next enrollment period, we will be able to maintain your current benefits without any premiums coming out of your pay. And maybe even make improvements.

However, we are bound to act within the confines of each Union’s
collective bargaining agreement. As such, we can’t touch the
dependent eligibility criteria, adopt a shorter waiting period for dental and vision coverage, adjust the coordination of benefits feature, or reinstate disability gap insurance.

If you have questions about any of this, ask us.

800-228-5088 or 614-508-2255