Nurses vote for new union and find their health benefits no longer cover

their families.

Good Samaritan Hospital in Rockland County, NY is a private Catholic hospital. The nurses decided to go with a new union that promised better benefits. They got it up to a point. The union got them a much better deal on prescription drugs. However in the small print that escaped the members was a provision that will discontinue health insurance and discount medical services at the hospital for the spouses (mostly husbands) and dependent children of the nurses. This leaves families scrambling for insurance -- if they can afford it at all. A lot of men are well into middle age with established medical conditions, making them a greater "risk" and exposing them to premiums that are prohibitive, not to mention the families lose access to group rates even without the pre-existing conditions. And may I emphasize this is a hospital exploiting its nurses and their families. Un-fucking-believable.

It pays to read your contracts. They only have themselves to blame. (IMO)

Where was the leadership? Did they not read the "small print"? Since that's, you know, their job? What new union is this, and what was the old one?

As a union member, you don't trust management to look after your interests and you keep an eye on your union even more closely. The nurses dropped the ball by trusting wholesale their representatives. Sounds like the new union made a deal with the hospital BEFORE the nurses voted to change representation.

to have more babies? And then not insuring them?

Why don't we have a nationalized health plan like every other civilized industrial country on the planet?

> Please, explain to me again why don't we have a nationalized health
> plan like every other civilized industrial country on the planet?

That would be because Congress has been bribed by big insurance,
big pharma, and big hospital to just never quite get around to
joing the 20th century (yes, I mean 20th) in this regard.

Tesha

No way this should have been a surprise. It should have been made clear before they even voted. Now they need a good attorney and a new vote. They got boonswaggled.

T-Grannie

this should not have been "overlooked".

My brother has been fighting a shrill union him and 300 others were tricked into joining. They found this new union's president's resume on monster.com Amongst other things list on his resume was "union buster" and "responsible for breaking nurse's strike"

Yes you need to be carefull before you sign any thing