As part of his ongoing effort to contend with the city's massive budget shortfall, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is going after the Chicago's annual $500 million bill for employee healthcare costs.
Negotiations between the Emanuel administration and labor unions reportedly led to a plan to be unveiled Friday that incentivizes healthy lifestyle choices while reducing the city's overall healthcare spending, the Chicago News Cooperative reports. City workers will be encouraged to enroll themselves and their dependents in a wellness program that includes enhanced and more frequent health screenings and supervises long-term risk-reducing goals like weight loss, exercise and quitting smoking. Opting out of the wellness program will hike up employee's monthly health insurance premiums by $50.
Workers will be screened on a bi-monthly basis to track progress on individual wellness goals, Fox Chicago reports. Improvements noted in wellness screenings can earn participants reductions in insurance premiums comparable to the penalties for opting out. Unions have expressed support for this program almost universally.
“There’s no penalty for getting sick. But, if you choose not to be in it and do it on your own, you’re gonna pay $50 more a month and $50 for your wife. That’s not that much money,” Lou Phillips, business manager of Laborers Union Local 1001 and a diabetic, told the Chicago Sun-Times. “It’ll get us in shape. You’re actually making yourself better. In the long run, it’s gonna save millions and millions of dollars. If people are healthy, they won’t be going to doctors to get toes or feet amputated. They won’t be going blind or getting dialysis for kidney failure.”
Only one local union has not yet agreed to the wellness plan: the Fraternal Order of Police. President Mike Shields told the Sun-Times that their line of work presents unique challenges that would make successful participation in the program difficult, unfairly raising their premiums without accounting for the toll police work takes on officers' health.
“Look at our membership. We’re not the healthiest. There are people who are overweight. We have higher blood pressure than your average citizen. We have a higher rate of diabetes from working different watches and eating more fast food,” Shields told the Sun-Times. “If you don’t participate and do every aspect of what wellness is telling you, at some point, they’re gonna turn around and say, ‘You have a higher premium.’ We have to make sure we’re protecting our membership from having to pay more of a premium than our current system.”
A report compiled by Emanuel's transition team found that only 4 percent of city employees account for more than 60 percent of the city's healthcare costs. The team called for the mayor to mobilize a wellness program during his first year in office, the Chicago News Cooperative reports.
The mayor estimates that the new plan could save the city $240 million over the course of four years.
WATCH a breakdown of the proposed wellness program: