We are aware that a contract between United Healthcare (United), our medical benefits provider, and St. Joseph’s Health has expired. The YMCA of Central New York employs 1,000+ individuals within the Greater Syracuse area, with 98 employees and 57 dependents currently on a United Healthcare medical plan. Since the contract has expired, our employees that utilize St. Joseph’s Health network have seen an increase in their medical costs due to now being considered “out of network”.
As one of the largest network providers in our area, the contract expiring with St. Joseph’s has put our staff in a terrible position. At best, our staff are now scrambling to find new medical care that they can afford. This disruption, however, has exponentially increased wait times for in network medical providers in our area. This has had the effect that employees face increased medical costs at their current St. Joseph’s providers or are forced to not have active health care while waiting to be accepted at a new provider. There are other employees that are currently under care due to medical conditions that cannot switch and are forced to face increased costs.
We find this dispute unacceptable. At the end of the day, the only people that lose in this are the hardworking staff of the YMCA of Central New York and their families. Affordable medical care is vital for our employees and their families, and the current disruption is unacceptable. We further cannot understand the allowance of this contract to expire seeing as the potential employer growth due to Micron coming to the Greater Syracuse area.
We urge you, with the support of Senior Leaders at the YMCA of Central New York, to end this dispute, renew the contract, and return in-network pricing to our employees.
Thank you,
MIKE HEPPNER
Associate Vice President of Human Resources
Josh Royce
Interim President & CEO
Erin Grayson
Chief Talent Officer
Stefanie Noble
Vice President of Marketing & Communications