APS and new healthcare provider
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Anonymous
How about not exclude KP to begin with? |
Anonymous
I really don't believe people actually begrudge him speaking out. It's the constant plea to parents to speak out on behalf of every cause as well. Even that is fine on many issues; but most seem to think being called to arms "in support" of the health insurance change crosses a line. It absolutely sucks for those who have been on Kaiser for a long time, especially if they love it. But for the half of the teachers, it's the same nuisance as anybody else goes through when their employer changes plans....only they may actually be getting a better plan. |
Anonymous
Yeah. There is a group of people (both employees and parents) who assign malicious intent to almost anything APS does. It doesn't matter if it's an HR issue or a policy to cut down on disruptive behavior in schools. If you visit another APS-focused page, you will always see someone mad about something and others jumping on making everything a huge a deal. The difference between APS and other employers is that there isn't necessarily a FB page to give people a platform to air their grievances. |
Anonymous
Agreed. It absolutely could have been genuine incompetence by the RFP writers. But the only thing that suggests intentional maliciousness is the teachers voicing their outrage. |
Anonymous
[Insert Michael Scott 'Thank you!' GIF] If 50% of your employees are on a single provider, and that provider's been available for over 30 years, then it really behooves whoever is in charge of benefits to either A)make sure they're available next year, or B) provide advance warning as to what's going on and why. The scale of the disruption, and the likelihood that it is the result of APS screwing up their RFP or having really messed up priorities, makes it unacceptable to just wait for open enrollment to let people know. I hope people start filing FOIAs soon. |
Anonymous
Really agree with this. I generally don’t mind that he passionately advocates for teachers – but I think his approach is wrong on this health insurance thing. There was a post that disappeared that said, essentially, “look at all of the APS families who either don’t have insurance or it is woefully inadequate – get some perspective.” It’s fine to be irritated and even angry that you have to change your providers if you like them. I get it. It sucks. APS could have handled the whole thing MUCH better, even if they followed the norm for such things. That would be a better advocacy angle, IMO. What harm is done by letting folks with Kaiser know that they didn’t bid (for whatever reasons, and if nefarious, that’s a problem) and change was coming? It’s was always going to be too late to “fight” to retain Kaiser. The minute they didn’t bid (again, for whatever reason), the party was over. But being transparent about it IS/WAS possible and they screwed the pooch on that. How did APS not realize that this was going to be ugly when 50% of the employees use Kaiser? Even if there’s no advance notice, have fact sheets ready because someone is going to ask questions. It isn’t that hard. And if there was no subterfuge to ditch Kaiser, this should be very straightforward. But someone is going to FOIA that stuff, so we will all find out eventually. Sigh. |
Anonymous
I haven’t seen any evidence that it was written in a way to exclude Kaiser, other than a few people stating that Kaiser doesn’t offer PPO plans (they do) |
Anonymous
There are, as I see it, three possibilities: 1) APS excluded Kaiser by accident (i.e. wrote the RFP in such a way that Kaiser can't or wouldn't bid), and upon realizing their mistake, chose to just go forward and force everyone else to live with it with the absolute bare minimum notice. 2) APS excluded Kaiser due to some misplaced sense of priorities (such as fewer providers means processing fewer payments, less back-end paperwork). That would mean APS places a lower value on keeping the health benefits of 50% of its workforce than on an opportunity to reduce its own administrative burden. In this scenario, APS also didn't feel the need to let anyone know it made this choice until the last possible moment. 3) Kaiser chose not to participate despite APS offering ostensibly reasonable terms it had offered in years past (seems pretty unlikely given that Kaiser is generally one of the more affordable and centralized providers, but we can entertain it as a possibility). In this case APS still failed to let people know what was going on, both to get them ready, and to give them a chance to agitate for Kaiser to change its tune. In all three scenarios waiting until the open season to let people know what happened is just an appalling management failure. In each scenario, letting things play out like they did just suggests a total clock-punching mentality on the part of Syphax, doing the bare minimum and then just shrugging if things go wrong. And now the burden of that incompetence is being borne by the people who are actually responsible for carrying out APS' mission. Considering our tax dollars go to achieving that mission, people have a right to be unhappy. Provider changes are a part of life, and happen to lots of employers. But the way this provider change was handled is unacceptable. This is a basic function of any medium or large scale organization and they managed to screw it up. Even if they didn't screw it up (as in scenario 3), their lassitude and failure to communicate turned it into a screw up. You can't expect an organization to accomplish its mission well if it turns a basic function (negotiating providers) into a disruptive event for half its employees, and then can't be bothered to do a to help ease the disruption. Apologies don't fix that kind of failure. People should be fired over it. |
Anonymous
If a significant number of your employees are currently on the Kaiser HMO plan, then writing an RFP that requires PPO plans seems pretty likely to cause some disruption, wouldn't you say? |
Anonymous
If someone makes a mistake that will disrupt the lives of a significant portion of the workforce, and they decide those people should only find out about that disruption at the last, legally permissible moment, and they further decide that the workforce is only entitled to a fake apology that doesn't really acknowledge where things went wrong, I think that person has departed the realm of bog-standard incompetence. Call it what you want, but it suggests that person doesn't actually care about the harm or disruption the mistake caused. If they did, they probably would have done more than the bare minimum to acknolwedge it. |
Anonymous
No, because it required both HMO and PPO |
Anonymous
Are you staff? |
Anonymous
Exactly. |
Anonymous
I think there's a 4th scenario: APS was looking to streamline for cost effectiveness. Which is an acceptable and prudent business practice, in and of itself. |
Anonymous
Teachers expressing outrage doesn't suggest maliciousness. And why do you think there was any "incompetence" by the RFP writers? |