We know healthcare is one of the most important issues in these negotiations. The reality is, costs are increasing for everyone – including for us.
While we did not propose changing premiums to address these rising costs, we did outline other methods to control healthcare costs through plan design changes and potential increased cost sharing.
By the numbers:
- U. S. Steel invests more than $272.6 million in our employees’ healthcare benefits every year.
- Since 2021, the average cost to provide healthcare for a U. S. Steel represented employee increased approximately $8,000 per individual, per year.
- Overall drug spend has increased 110% per covered employee over the last five years, largely driven by the explosion of GLP1 drugs in the last three years.
Managing healthcare costs is a shared challenge and is critical to protecting wages, jobs, and benefits for employees. With this in mind, U. S. Steel has put forward an initial healthcare proposal.
Our proposal addresses costs in four key areas:
- Smarter Plan Design: With the USW, we want to take a deep look at the healthcare plans we offer and identify ways to steer towards high-value providers, lower-cost sites of care, and generic medications. Left unmanaged, healthcare costs will put high-quality care for our employees and their families at risk.
- Managing Drug Spend: The explosive growth of GLP1 weight loss drugs has contributed to already rising healthcare costs for the average represented employee. We want to work with the USW to jointly address these, and other specialty drug costs, while protecting medically-necessary care.
- Making Informed Decisions: Preventative care is not only fundamental to the health and safety of all our employees, it also saves money. In partnership with the USW, we need to be good consumers of our healthcare. Choosing the right place for care helps employees receive the treatment they need while helping control healthcare costs so we can continue providing strong benefits for employees and families.
- Working Together: Our proposal creates a Joint Benefits Committee that brings U. S. Steel and the USW together each year to review healthcare costs and look for ways to keep benefits affordable. If annual healthcare costs are projected to increase by more than 3.0%, the Committee would first work together to identify cost-saving opportunities before any additional employee costs are considered.
We intend to continue negotiating in good faith on this matter. Check back here for additional updates as discussions progress.
