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Vision, Hearing & Dental Benefits
Vision, Hearing and Dental Benefits Need Improvements
While Union negotiators have held the line on passing on additional costs for health care plans, the improvements on vision, hearing aid and dental care are overdue.
When health care was the monthly topic in October, members continually made comments about the lack of improvements in these benefits. One need only look at the history to realize why members are demanding change. For glasses and contacts, the reimbursement levels have gone unchanged since 1989 while everything else has gone up dramatically. For the hearing aid benefit, which was originally negotiated into the 1977 contract, there have been only two increases with the last being in 1992.
Dental benefits also end up taking a bite out of members' household budgets -- not to mention the cost of orthodontics.
It's Our Time...This Time! and the Union Benefits Committee is working hard to make improvements. Union negotiators have poured through the thousands of membership comments and will use them to help formulate the Union proposal, which will be presented to the Company on May 9th.
Beyond just increasing the current benefit levels, the committee is also pushing for Lasik treatment for vision coverage -- arguing that in the long run, it would be the most cost effective treatment to offer. The Committee has also researched and documented that other companies (even some of Boeing's subcontractors) currently provide for prescription safety glasses without having it count against the employee's vision benefits.
Click here to view the history of vision care benefits