NYC Retirees to Mayor Adams: ‘Happy B’day, You’re One of Us! Now, Protect Medicare!
NYCOPSR President Marianne Pizzitola stands with oversized birthday and Medicare Health Insurance cards retirees hoped to present to Mayor Eric Adams during this week’s rally on the steps of City Hall in support of Intro. 1096. Bill sponsor Chris Marte looks on [r]. Photos/Joe Maniscalco
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include the latest developments in the race for mayor.
By Joe Maniscalco
Unbelievable. Terrible. Awful.
Those where just some of the choice words New York City municipal retirees rallying on the City Hall steps Tuesday used to describe the City Council’s steadfast refusal to protect them from predatory Medicare Advantage health insurance.
In June, Mayor Eric Adams applauded a New York State Court of Appeals ruling leaving the door wide open for the City of New York to at some point in the future strip 250,000 municipal retirees and their dependents of their Traditional Medicare health insurance benefits and push them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan.
Hizzoner, still struggling to get out of single digits in the latest mayoral polls, abandoned the Medicare Advantage push two days after the June ruling—but thanked the high court for “recognizing the city has a legal right to offer alternative health care coverage plans to retirees and for acknowledging that we must have flexibility to adapt our policies based on changing times.”
“This is an important precedent that will allow the city to modify plans in response to evolving conditions,” Mayor Adams added.
Intro. 1096, if enacted, would protect municipal retirees from those “evolving conditions” and guarantee they—and all of the retirees coming up after them—would continue to enjoy the worry-free health care they were promised when they signed up for civil service.
NYC municipal retirees enter the City Hall gates on Tuesday, Sept. 2 to urge Mayor Adams, Speaker Adrienne Adams, and the New York City Council to pass the bill to protect Traditional Medicare benefits from being usurped by Medicare Advantage.
“I listened to my mother and my father,” New York City municipal retiree Mary Kanigher told Work-Bites outside the City Hall gates this week. “He worked for the Parks Department. He said go ahead and work for the city, you’ll get a better health benefit when you retire. I listened to my parents—should I call them liars now?”
Mary Kanigher wasn’t alone—she brought her 87-year-old mom Sandra Kanigher in a wheelchair to the Intro. 1096 rally. The elder Kanigher spent 20 years of her life as a clerical worker for the Department of Social Services [DSS]. And Mary Kanigher? She didn’t just listen to her parents—she devoted 47 years of her working life to the District Attorney’s Office.
“I think they’ve decided that after they’ve used us, we’re now too expensive and they want to get rid of us and put us in health care that is just not adequate,” retired Bronx social worker Jacqueline Lutnick told Work-Bites before the rally.
Lutnick took a 1 hour and 45-minute subway ride from the Bronx down to Lower Manhattan just to make it in time for Tuesday’s Intro. 1096 rally.
“My father was in Aetna,” she added. “I know exactly how Aetna works and that’s not what I want. I get that we have to cut corners and whatever, but I’m already in an HMO. I’ve been in one since I’ve been with the city. I’m with HIP. Why should I have to change now after 30-something years? In fact, I even had it when I was a kid. So, it’s 40-something years I’ve had HIP. Now, because some bean counter has decided we’re too expensive they want to cut us off? That’s not right because that’s not what they promised us when we signed on.”
New York City retiree Mary Kanigher (standing) and her 87-year-old mom Sandra wait to be allowed through the City Hall gates on Tuesday.
At the time of this writing, Intro. 1096 still only has 18 cosponsors—meaning 33 other members of the New York City Council including Speaker Adrienne Adams [D-28th District]—have heard the pleas of retirees who insist they need Intro. 1096’s protections, but have turned their backs on them.
The conclusion? They, like Mayor Adams, also want the “flexibility to adapt our policies based on changing times.”
“My city councilman is Eric Dinowitz [D-11th District]. I have been in his office many times [in the Bronx] to ask him to explain his stance on Intro. 1096 and he called the cops on me,” retired New York City school teacher Gail Lindenberg told Work-Bites.
Work-Bites made repeated attempts to reach Council Member Dinowitz’ office for comment on this story, but those attempts were unsuccessful.
New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees President Marianne Pizzitola, meanwhile, expressed her hope on Tuesday that more members of the City Council will break ranks and support Intro. 1096’s passage.
“I hope so,” she told Work-Bites. “But I’m also hearing more and more that the reason they’re not coming on is because the speaker is telling them not to—I heard that again today several times. There’s still that bottleneck.”
Speaker Adams, who was District Council 37’s number one pick in June’s Democratic Part Primary for mayor, has consistently opposed any legislation municipal retirees have brought forth to protect them from the kinds of profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plans that routinely subject recipients to outrageous delays and denials of care, along with ever-dwindling pools of participating doctors and hospitals.
Ninety-two-year-old civil rights icon Evie Jones-Rich was among the roughly 100 New York City municipal retirees who turned out for Tuesday’s rally on the City Hall steps in support of Intro. 1096.
In making its political endorsements in June, the largest public employees union in the city under the leadership of Executive Director Henry Garrido said it “declined to endorse any candidate who supports anti-collective bargaining legislation like Intro. 1096-2024.”
Garrido has long argued that legislation protecting retiree health care undermines collective bargaining rights. But as Pizzitola and New York City municipal retirees have repeatedly shown, it actually doesn’t do that because unions like DC 37 no longer represent workers once they retire.
“We worked all our lives and we have to fight for this? Mary Kanigher continued. “There has to be more people signing [onto Intro. 1096]. We can’t just have on person—the head speaker there—telling the others to say no. She’s threatened the other people, [saying] we’re not gonna give money…who is she? She cares for the retirees and the elderly? She doesn’t understand who put her in [office]. One day she’s gonna be old, too—but she’s gonna have money.”
According to Mary Kanigher, her mom is somehow surviving on a meager pension of less than $15,000 a year. Contrast that to Speaker Adams and her City Council colleagues who all earn six-figure salaries and will be in decidedly much better financial shape when they retire.
“That’s all she gets. And now, with all the health insurance, the co-payments…it’s sad,” Kanigher said. “We gave up our lives practically [to work for the city].”
Speaker Adams insists the decisions regarding healthcare for both active municipal workers and retirees is the sole responsibility of the Mayor’s Office.
New York City retiree and cancer survivor Roberta Gonzalez (middle) helps hold up a banner for Intro. 1096.
This week, a spokesperson for her office told Work-Bites that Intro. 1096 “continues to go through the Council’s legislative process, which is deliberative and allows for thorough public input.”
Council Member Chris Marte [D-1st District] sponsored Intro. 1096 last year, and although Mayor Adams officially dropped the Medicare Advantage push in June, Marte still insists his colleagues must codify his bill as soon as possible because “at any moment, this mayor or a future mayor can reverse positions and try again to put retirees on Medicare Advantage or an equally dangerous plan.”
“Right now, we have a Speaker who is in a lame duck session,” Council Member Marte told Work-Bites on Tuesday. “Council members no longer have to wait for a budget to bring back the bacon to their districts…I truly believe we can get more members to sign on. This is a crucial issue and an issue that is going to save people’s lives—most of them constituents of my fellow colleagues.”
Pizzitola said retirees now need the mayor to tell Speaker Adams to back Intro. 1096.
“If the mayor would tell the speaker she needs to pass this because it’s the right thing to do, maybe she will,” Pizzitola told Work-Bites. “We hope she will because she will be 65 years-old on December 9—and she, too, will be one of us.”
Retirees brought birthday gifts for Mayor Adams during this week’s rally on the City Hall steps to celebrate Hizzoner’s recent 65th birthday and to officially welcome him the Medicare club.
“Happy birthday,” Pizzitola declared. “You are 65. You always say you are one of us—well, today you are truly one of us. Today, you are Medicare-eligible, which means the federal public health benefit of Traditional Medicare is your primary health care.”
Hizzoner did not receive the cards, however. That task, instead, was left to former State Senator-turned senior Adams adviser Diane Savino who ultimately came out to the City Hall steps and collected the oversized birthday and Medicare cards from retirees on the mayor’s behalf.
Retirees brought silver mylar balloons filled with helium, too. But they got loose and floated away.
Work-Bites made repeated attempts to reach the Mayor’s Office for comment on this story, but those attempts were also unsuccessful.
Many of the latest poll numbers actually place right-wing conservative candidate Curtis Sliwa ahead of Mayor Adams in the upcoming Nov. 4 election. State Senator Zohran Mamdani still leads the pack with former disgraced New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo running within striking distance at number two.
NYCOPSR-endorsed candidate Jim Walden, meanwhile, has suspended his mayoral run. As this story was going to press, the New York Times also reported that Mayor Adams is considering suspending his re-election bid as well and taking a post within the Trump administration. According to the Times, Sliwa could also be considering abandoning his mayoral run, too, and joining the Trump administration.