By Joe Maniscalco
Last week’s New York City Council hearing on changing Administrative Code 12-126 made two already obvious things a helluva lot clearer. They are as follows:
A.) Civil Service and Labor Committee Chair Carmen De La Rosa [D-10th District] is very invested in having her colleagues believe the mayor and the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee have the “unilateral ability” to move municipal retirees into a for-profit, privatized Medicare Advantage health insurance program.
B.) Mayor Eric Adams and the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee are hellbent on pushing city retirees into a for-profit, privatized Medicare Advantage health insurance program no matter how much evidence they’re shown the program is a disaster.
Forget that just last week, Congress Member Jamaal Bowman [D-NY] went on record with Work-Bites calling the drive to push New York City municipal retirees into a Medicare Advantage plan “a horrific attempt to save money on the backs of our city’s former teachers, nurses, and first responders who deserve access to the high quality health care they were promised.”
Former Cigna Communications Director Wendell Potter told the Jan. 9 hearing, Medicare Advantage has “bamboozled employers, unions, lawmakers and the public for years, for no other reason than to maximize profits to keep Wall Street happy. Medicare Advantage is a money making scam. And I should know — I helped sell it.”
That’s right, Wendell Potter — the former health insurance industry insider who, after years of pushing the for-profit privatization scheme on unsuspecting retirees, had his come-to-Jesus moment and is now one of the nation’s leading critics leading the charge against for-profit, privatized Medicare Advantage plans.
“I implore you not to vote in favor of hurting the city’s retirees,” Potter continued, “doing so will not make retirees healthier — but it will make the bottom line of insurance companies much healthier with the hard-earned tax dollars.”
Recently released federal audits uncovered Medicare Advantage health insurance plans cost the government nearly $12 billion in overcharges last year alone.
In December, Potter joined with Congressmen Ro Khanna [D-Calif.] and Mark Pocan [D-Wis.] in supporting the Save Medicare Act, a bill aimed at banning private insurance companies from continuing to call their for-profit insurance products “Medicare.”
“To be blunt,” Potter added, “they are stealing our tax dollars to enrich their shareholders.”
Work-Bites has already documented other more important evidence about how detrimental — even deadly — Medicare Advantage plans can be for municipal retirees.
But not to worry, the Adams administration and the heads of the MLC still insist that will not happen here in New York City. And why not? Well…they’re “confident” it will not. Also, the heads of the MLC say they’re gonna “strategize” and “fight the industry.”
This week, that kind of talk prompted one Work-Bites reader to write: “If the Aetna plan is tailored specifically for NYC retirees as was sated by OLR folks and the mayor — where are the results of the PILOT project that documents the success in NYC?”
Office of Labor Relations Deputy Commissioner Dan Pollak, told the Jan. 9 hearing that the Adams administration has already “explored many other options,” but has somehow determined, nonetheless, that a Medicare Advantage plan — in this case with Aetna — is “the best way forward.”
Pollak told the committee straight out: “This is a unique opportunity to use federal funding.” He was, of course, referring to the federal subsidies the mayor and the heads of the MLC would like to start using to pay for municipal retiree healthcare.
Municipal retirees who have mobilized in force against the campaign to push them — and all those following them into retirement — into a Medicare Advantage plan, say the city hasn’t realistically explored other money-saving options, or turned over nearly enough stones.
“You’re being asked to do something you don’t have to do,” NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees President Marianne Pizzitola told Council Member De La Rosa. “There are other ways to be able to do this rather than take away people’s health insurance under the guise of giving them choice.”
Stu Eber, chair of the Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations [COMRO] and president emeritus of the NYC Managerial Employees Association, delivered testimony saying the administration has created a “false dichotomy.”
“They are forcing you to choose between preserving Medicare as our primary medical coverage with the City paying for our supplemental coverage or imposing premiums on all members of the City health plan,” he wrote. “The attempt to rush you to vote on the amendment to Administrative Code 12-126 is just one of their tactics to force us into a Medicare Advantage plan.”
Eber is urging the City Council members to “hit the pause button” and instead form a blue ribbon panel charged with finding alternative means of saving $600 million or more in health care costs — without imposing premiums or eliminating Medicare.
“The history of our City since 1975 proves that we can solve our problems when we all sit down together at the table and work to find solutions to our problems,” Eber wrote. "Please do not allow the Administration to force you into amending the Administrative Code that the courts have ruled protects our Medicare.”
Some retirees, as Pizzitola pointed out, are cops and firefighters whose top pay when they retired back in 1979 was $15,000.
“One of our retirees is in his early 90s,” Pizzitola said. “His pension today is $26,000 — and that’s with his variable supplement. That man can’t afford to pay a starting $200 premium in order to keep choice of senior care.
But what New York City Council members have to remember, Pizzitola added, is that when municipal workers retired, they retired with a “promise of something we would have.”
“In our summary plan books the terminology literally states something like this,” Pizzitola said, “‘The benefits that you have in your employment will continue in your retirement — until your death.’”
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