Dear colleague,
Open enrollment for your health care benefits just started and will end on October 31, 2022. Changes made this month will take effect on January 1, 2023, and be in place for the rest of the calendar year.
Our health benefits may experience some steep increases in 2023. As we wrote to you last month, the state of New Jersey, with little warning, decided to require thousands of state workers, including Rutgers employees, to pay much more in health care contributions. If you are in Direct 15, 1525, 2030, or 2035, or in the Horizon HMO or a high deductible plan, your payroll contributions may go up by 18 percent starting on January 1, 2023.
However, if you are in the new PPO plan NJ Direct (or Direct 2019) or the Omnia tiered network plan, then your payroll contributions will go up by no more than 3 percent.
Our union is currently trying to get the state to adjust the 18 percent increase downward to closer to the 3 percent figure, but we haven’t reached any agreement.
At this point, we suggest that you NOT make any changes to your health plan until we know more about that 18 percent rate increase. We hope to have updates in the next two weeks and will report back to you if we make any progress. We will hold a series of Zoom town halls the week of October 16 and will be available through October 31 to help advise you on your plan options for 2023.
In the meantime, we encourage you to attend sessions run by the university, Horizon, and Optum to ask questions and be better prepared to make your selections once we have final determinations on the 2023 plan rates. If you have any questions for us, please email us at aaup@rutgersaaup.org.
In solidarity,
Becky and Todd
Rebecca Givan, President, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
Todd Wolfson, General Vice President, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
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