Sweeney, Christie and the 3% Red Herring

by: Couch Potato Politics

Wed Jun 22, 2011 at 12:08:06 PM EDT

As it turns out, the 3% was an invisible carrot.
The 3% plan offered was so undefined that the union was being asked to agree to nothing. The union would have been agreeing to a plan that had no details. They would have agreed to let Sweeney, the Christie administration and company "Fill in the blanks" for thousands of members' crucial health insurance.

The deal offered was a 3% cap on a completely undefined healthcare plan. There was no information given about co-pays, deductibles, in-network vs. out-of network coverage, eligibility, nothing.

There was no guarantee that the plan would not have been a bare bones, catastrophic plan with huge deductibles that would have amounted to no health insurance at all. All that would be decided after CWA took the deal. And who would decide the plan then?

A board of 5 union representatives and 5 administration representatives with a 13th deciding vote held by the state treasurer. The board would have created the plan, after the deal took place, but if there was a challenge by the union's side of the board and the board was split, the state treasurer (appointed by Chris Christie) would have decided what the plan would have been.

There was no guarantee that the treasurer and the governor would support anything more than catastrophic emergency coverage with huge deductibles.

The deal that CWA rejected was essentially nothing but a promise that something would be created. They had every reason to believe that it would not have been a viable plan for anyone.

AND the union was told they had 5 minutes to take or leave the deal!

Now we are hearing and reading dishonest and distorted stories of how CWA walked away from a lucrative deal, when in fact, the deal was far from lucrative and would have endangered lower income workers with crucial health care needs and created an even more unequal and unfair expense for workers.