Excerpt: To help curb growing health-care costs, the Nutter administration wants members of Philadelphia's largest municipal employee union, District Council 33, to start paying for the health benefits they receive. The city is also seeking to take over the billing responsibility to insurance carriers from all four city unions, which together represent 20,000 workers. Both moves represent a remarkable shift from current practices, and are among the more aggressive and controversial proposals made by the city as it pursues new labor contracts with the police and firefighters unions, and District Council 33 and District Council 47 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. Contracts with all four expired June 30.  MORE >>