December 6 – The state agency that provides health insurance benefits to government employees in Hawaii plans to offer employees a special open enrollment period to allow them to change their health coverage from Permanent Kaiser to Hawaii Medical Services Association due to the prolonged strike by Kaiser mental health clinicians.
The state agency that provides health insurance benefits to civil servants in Hawaii plans to offer employees a special open enrollment period to allow them to change their health coverage from Permanent Kaiser to Hawaii Medical Services Association due to the prolonged strike by Kaiser mental health clinicians.
The board of directors overseeing the Hawaii Employer and Union Health Benefits Trust Fund plans to address the issue at a public meeting today amid concerns that Kaiser Health Insurance employees are struggling to access mental health and behavioral health services.
Active employees can benefit from a special enrollment period that extends up to December 23 or informed that they can submit an appeal to the EUTF seeking to change insurance plans, according to a staff submission outlining the agenda item.
The EUTF is the state’s largest purchaser of health insurance, providing health insurance benefits to all eligible state and county workers nationwide. Hawaii. It covers around 68,000 active employees plus 60,000 of their beneficiaries, as well as 47,000 retirees and 20,000 of their beneficiaries.
Kaiser’s roughly 60 clinicians, including psychologists, social workers, psychiatric nurses and chemical addiction counselors, have been on strike for about 100 days, in what is believed to be the longest strike by healthcare workers. mental in WE history, according to National Union of Health Care Workersthe union that represents them.
“I have very serious concerns about Kaiser’s mental health services and the impact of the ongoing strike on our members’ access to potentially life-saving care,” Hawaii State Teachers Association President Osa Tui, who also sits on the EUTF board, said in a union press release. “We need to learn more about the availability of Kaiser’s mental health services and ensure our members receive the care they need.”
Kaiser clinicians have argued that understaffing at Kaiser health clinics has resulted in an overwhelming workload and that Kaiser needs to improve its compensation package to attract new hires. The union says that during contract negotiations, Kaiser management instead offered lower wages and reduced pension benefits for new hires. The union said in November that Kaiser offered a starting salary for many Kaiser mental health therapists that was about 20% lower than that of their counterparts in Northern California.
Kaiser, in turn, said the NUHW used standard bargaining tactics and criticized union employees for walking off the job.
“Unfortunately, NUHW has a standard strategy that it uses to negotiate on the continent, including strikes, and making unsubstantiated allegations in an attempt to create undue concern regarding access to mental health care services,” said Kaiser said in a statement.
Kaiser says he has a plan in place to attract more mental health clinicians and has more than 100 contracted mental health providers accepting new patients.
“We are very grateful to our new and existing community suppliers and nearly 40% of Permanent Kaiser therapists who chose to come to work and care for our patients during the strike,” Kaiser said. “It saddens us that the current strike is subjecting many of our therapists to unnecessary stress and sacrifice and disrupting patient care, while doing nothing to help reach an agreement.”
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