(NEW YORK CITY) – About three-quarters of New York City’s Municipal Workforce, pre-Medicare Retirees and their dependents will have expanded access to Doctors and other Clinicians, according to a tentative, cost-saving agreement the City and Union Officials have reached with two major insurance firms. 

The plan, jointly run by EmblemHealth and UnitedHealthcare, would continue to provide premium-free coverage for 750,000 Active and Retired City Employees, Mayor Eric Adams and City Labor Commissioner Renee Campion said. 

The agreement would for the first time offer a broad national network of providers for the more than 80,000 members who live outside New York, City Officials said.

It would also bring an expected additional 200,000 members’ current out-of-network Doctors into the system.

The arrangement would - also for the first time, move the City to a self-funded insurance model, standard among large employers, a change officials said will stabilize rising costs.

The plan would trim the City’s health care costs by more than 10%, with savings expected at up to $1 billion annually, or just under 1% of the City’s budget, “while simultaneously expanding, instead of reducing, benefits and coverage,” City Officials said. 

The provisional five-year agreement between the two companies and the City now awaits approval from the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC), the umbrella organization of Public Sector Unions.

The MLC is expected to take up the matter toward the end of the month.

If the MLC approves the agreement and City Officials finalize it, the new plan would go into effect on January 1st, 2026.

Last week’s announcement, while expected, comes after years of rancorous disputes, including in court over proposed changes to health care plans for Municipal Workers and Retirees, most notably the Adams Administration’s efforts to move roughly 250,000 City Retirees into a Medicare Advantage Plan. 

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