NYC Council Member Chris Marte to Host Town Hall on Medicare Advantage Fight

The June 5 Town Hall on retiree healthcare will be held at the Manny Cantor Center located at 197 East Broadway in Manhattan.

By Joe Maniscalco

If Mayor Eric Adams is ultimately successful in blowing up what used to constitute a “good city job” for generations of New Yorkers by pushing Medicare Advantage on 250,000 retirees it’ll be because the political establishment—both “left” and “right”—have agreed to ball up the Medicare & Medicaid Act of 1965 and toss it in the garbage can.

And then light the whole thing on fire.

As CWA 1182 President and Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] Trustee Gloria Middleton told Work-Bites in 2023, “We have to deal with these insurance companies. We just have no choice in that because that's the world.”

The New York State Court of Appeals has yet to deliver a verdict in the so-called “nuclear option case” Hizzoner and the heads of the MLC still hope will give them the green light to gut retiree healthcare and force all present and future municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan. 

And Intro. 1096—the New York City Council bill designed to make turning retiree healthcare inside out against the law—still only has 16 cosponsors at the time of this writing. That’s not just any New York City Council—that’s the women-led, supposedly most “progressive” City Council in NYC’s history.

Intro. 1096 continues to stagnate largely because District Council 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido—head of the largest public sector union in the city—and New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams—Henry’s top pick in the June 24 mayoral primary—have made it clear that any City Council member foolish enough to side with retirees fighting the Medicare Advantage push will face their wrath.

The paltry number of Intro. 1096 cosponsors could now be standing at 18 instead of 16 had City Council Members Darlene Mealy [D-41st District] and Kamillah H. Hanks [D-49th District] not retracted their initial support for the bill.

Why did they reverse themselves? Neither Council Member Mealy or Council Member Hanks have responded to Work-Bites’ repeated requests for comment or clarification.

Here’s the City Council document recording Council Member Hank’s support for Intro. 1096 dated Oct. 23, 2024.

“We wouldn’t have needed the courts if [New York City Council members] had done their jobs,” DC 37 retiree and NYC Coalition of Labor Union Women President Michelle Keller recently told Work-Bites.

Make no mistake, between Donald Trump in the White House and union heads like Henry Garrido who are all in on profit-driven healthcare, we are all far more likely to see Traditional Medicare vanish before our very eyes than we are of ever seeing Medicare for All.

Tomorrow night at 6 p.m., New York City Council Member Chris Marte [D-1st District]—prime sponsor of Intro. 1096—will host a special Town Hall meeting on retiree healthcare at the Manny Cantor Center located at 197 East Broadway in Manhattan. A panel of labor and healthcare experts is expected to delve deep into the City of New York’s ongoing efforts to strip municipal retirees of their Traditional Medicare benefits and push them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan.

The public is encouraged to attend and ask questions about that fight and the status of Intro. 1096.

“[Medicare Advantage advocates] were expecting to get this done and dusted before we woke up,” Keller added.

In addition to subjecting recipients to evaporating pools of participating doctors and hospitals, and delays and denials of necessary care not experienced with Traditional Medicare benefits—the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) estimates that Medicare Advantage plans could be over-billing the government by more than $43 billion every year.

The Medicare Advantage push in New York City continues to roll on despite that reality with advocates insisting they have crafted “specially tailored” plans for those they have targeted for privatization.

And it’s important to once again note that those once vaunted “good city jobs” New Yorkers were always encouraged to get still have not rebounded from their pandemic lows when the city’s job vacancy rate hovered around 26,000. Last year, City Comptroller Brad Lander’s office reported that there were still 17,137 city jobs going unfilled.