Could your budget handle a third of a year's pay in additional medical costs? That's what the University of Massachusetts Amherst is about to do to some of its workers. We need your help to stop a potentially devastating change to their health insurance! Here's more from Working Massachusetts Co-Chair and UAW Local 2322 President Ron Patenaude :
On August 1, 2011, the University of Massachusetts Amherst is adopting a health insurance plan that will create 15% coinsurance costs for students trying to access health care outside the University. This means that Ob/Gyn visits, specialist appointments, hospitalization, and other services will have an outrageous out-of-pocket cost for students and student employees. UMass Dartmouth is adopting a similarly repugnant plan.
Mass-Care, Massachusetts Jobs with Justice, UMass Student Labor Action Project (SLAP), The Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts (PHENOM), and UAW Local 2322 have signed onto a letter to the Massachusetts Commissioner of Higher Education, the Chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, and the Chair of the UMass Board of Trustees, calling on them to address the devastating changes to the Student Health Insurance Plan that UMass Amherst and UMass Dartmouth have proposed. We are now sending that letter to higher levels of the state government, including the governor, the lieutenant governor, the state auditor, state representatives and senators from the Amherst and Dartmouth districts, the chairs of the state's Joint Committees on Health Care Financing and Higher Education, as well as to the University administrators who chose the plans.
You can sign on to that letter today by entering your name, email, and zip code below. By clicking submit, you will send an email with the text below to the state senators and state representatives from Amherst and Dartmouth along with the chairs of the Joint Committees on Health Care Financing and Higher Education, the president of the UMass system, and the campus administrators charged with choosing the insurance plans. It's time to let them know that we will not accept dangerous "co-insurance" plans in Massachusetts. Anyone interested in saving health care in the state is encouraged to sign on. You can read the letter and enter your information using the following link: http://uaw2322.org/content/tell-umass-co-insurance-no-insurance
Ronald Rene Patenaude
President UAW Local 2322
