Culinary to offer low-cost health care coverage to laid-off hotel workers

By Nicole Lucht (contact), In Business reporter

Fri, Jun 19, 2009 (3 a.m.)

Culinary Union members who are unemployed or working part time are being offered a low-cost health insurance that covers doctor visits, prescriptions and laboratory tests.

Culinary boss D. Taylor said the union decided to offer the $75 per month plan — called Life Saver — to help workers and their families maintain their health while they are unemployed.

When the economy was booming, the Culinary represented 60,000 full-time workers at Strip and downtown gaming properties, as well as those working at laundries. Since then, those full-time positions have dropped by about 10 percent, he said.

The union is dipping into its general health fund to subsidize the program that begins July 1.

Taylor doesn’t know how many unemployed workers are going to sign up for the plan, but applications have already started to roll in. The $75 covers the worker and family.

The idea came out of necessity, Taylor said, adding that the insurance, however limited, can help the laid-off worker and family maintain their health.

“We call it a life saver,” he said. “A life saver is not a big boat, but it saves you until you’re back to work and you have a full health plan.

“The idea was really driven by a strong sense that we have to do everything possible to get people through this difficult time.”

Launce Rake, spokesman for Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, said that besides benefiting unemployed union workers, the Culinary’s plan helps to take the strain off charities and government programs that assist with health care.

The group is a coalition of progressive activists. The Culinary sits on PLAN’s board of directors.

“I think such a move is a really, really great thing for the community and for the working men and women (who have lost their jobs),” Rake said.

Nevada is No. 2 in the number of people ages 18 to 64 who don’t have health insurance, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. The number of people in Nevada without health insurance is 24.7 percent. Texas, the state with the most uninsured people in that age group, has 29.5 percent. The state with the lowest number of uninsured is Massachusetts (4.9 percent), because it requires all adults to have health insurance unless they can’t afford it.

With the recession, thousands of Nevadans have lost insurance since January, said Larry Matheis, executive director of the Nevada State Medical Association and a board member of the Nevada Public Health Foundation.

“Anything that provides — this is really a stopgap measure, I think — is desirable so that people are able to continue to get necessary medical services without becoming, in effect, bankrupt,” he said. “The extension of the coverage is a significant step.”

Matheis said he expects it to be expensive for the Culinary to offer the plan, especially as employers face growing challenges to offer health insurance to current employees.

The Culinary’s Life Saver plan is a joint labor-management program, Taylor said. The health and welfare trust fund board, composed of management and union leaders, had to approve the subsidy.

“There’s a recognition there’s a crisis of proportions we’d never seen before and we didn’t want to have a situation where children, for example, couldn’t get their (needed) medicine,” Taylor said.

There is an option for workers who are involuntarily working less than full time to pay to keep their full-time health benefits. Those workers can also select the Life Saver plan.

And those laid off workers who have chosen not to pay union dues can also pay into the plan, as can those who are working reduced hours, Taylor said.