NYC Mayor, Council Speaker Play Ping Pong with Retiree Medicare As National Threat Looms
By Joe Maniscalco
Last month, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced his decision to suddenly abandon efforts to push 250,000 municipal retirees and their dependents into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan nobody wants.
But ever since then, Hizzoner and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams have been batting around the ultimate fate of retiree health care like a ping-pong ball.
Retirees who have spent the last four years successfully blocking both former Mayor Bill de Blasio and the current mayor from herding them into a Medicare Advantage health insurance scheme straight out of Project 2025—insist that the only real way to protect the Traditional Medicare benefits retirees earned on the job is to pass Intro. 1096.
Council Member Chris Marte [D-1st District] introduced the bill last fall containing unequivocal language stating the City of New York “must offer Medicare-eligible City retirees and their Medicare-eligible dependents at least one Medigap plan with benefits equivalent to or better than those available to City retirees and their dependents as of December 31, 2021.”
But District Council 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido—head of the largest public sector union in the city—has led a scorched earth campaign against the passage of Intro. 1096. The union invested heavily in Speaker Adams’ failed bid to win the Democratic Party nomination for mayor, tapping the Queens County legislator as its top pick on the ranked-choice voting ballot in June. Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani and State Senator Zellnor Myrie were DC37’s second and third choices.
Speaker Adams has steadfastly opposed Intro. 1096, as well as earlier versions of the retiree bill. In 2023, Civil Service & Labor Committee Chair and self-described “Progressive Democrat” Carmen De La Rosa [D-10th District] declared following a city hearing that she would not “cross the Speaker” and allow an earlier version of the retiree bill to ever get out of her committee.
Intro. 1096 still has just 18 cosponsors at the time of this writing.
Does the retiree bill stand a better chance of passing now that Mayor Adams—who continues to seek re-election in the fall—has decided to abandon the Medicare Advantage push? After all, the New York State Court of Appeals on June 18 shocked retirees when it delivered the victory in the so-called “nuclear option case” that the mayor had long sought.
“New York City is dedicated to finding health care coverage savings where possible, which is evidenced by the fact that we are in negotiations for a new health plan for both active and pre-Medicare retirees as we speak,” a spokesperson for the Adams administration recently told Work-Bites. “We look forward to negotiating a plan that considers the needs of public servants as well as taxpayers, and we remain committed to going through the collective bargaining process to reach decisions on employee benefits. We will have more to say on Intro. 1096 once City Council has made a decision on the bill.”
It looks like the Adams administration is gonna be waiting a long time because, according to Speaker Adams, the ball is actually in the mayor’s court.
“Our position is clear,” a spokesperson for Speaker Adams told Work-Bites. “The responsibility of healthcare decisions for municipal employees and retirees lies with the mayoral administration as the mayor's recent decision shows.”
And there we are—the ol’ back and forth. The fate of retiree health care, however, isn’t a game—and Council Member Marte insists it is long past time for Intro. 1096 to get a fair hearing.
“The City Council has legislated municipal retiree healthcare for decades and there’s been no change to the charter to indicate that power has since been lost,” he told Work-Bites via email. “The Speaker is well aware of this strong precedent, and if she supports our public servants, then there is no reason to delay a hearing and vote on Intro 1096 any further.”
New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees President Marianne Pizzitola said that the mayor’s latest statements to Work-Bites in reference to Intro. 1096 “are addressing active and pre-retiree employees.”
“He has said quite clearly that he supports our 250,000 members retaining their current health care,” Pizzitola told Work-Bites. “As to [Speaker] Adrienne Adams, the mayor has made a good decision for the present, now we anticipate her help into getting [Intro. 1096] signed into law.”
A few days after Mayor Adams announced his decision to abandon the Medicare Advantage push—at least for now—Stu Eber, head of the Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations issued an open letter partly thanking Pizzitola and her organization for successfully beating back the Medicare Advantage push and agreeing with Speaker Adams that the city "can now move towards a solution."
“That solution,” Eber wrote, “includes passing Intro 1096, which would ensure future mayors could not try to end our supplemental Medicare coverage.”
Clearly, passing Intro. 1096 is not something either Mayor Adams or Speaker Adams wants to see happen. In announcing on June 20 that his administration is abandoning the Medicare Advantage push, Mayor Adams also said he was still grateful to the New York State Court of Appeals for “recognizing, earlier this week, that 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.
In his open letter last month, Eber also called on the Adams administration to “instruct Corp Council to return to State Supreme Court to request the court to dismiss all charges and permanently close the Bentkowski case.”
Is that something the administration is willing to do? Work-Bites has made repeated requests for clarification but has yet to get a straight answer.
And for those keeping track, Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani—winner of last month’s heated Democratic Party mayoral primary—also appears to be running as fast and as far away from Intro. 1096 as he can.
Last fall, the Democratic Socialist said he agreed with the “spirit of the legislation” when Work-Bites pressed him on the issue. What does Mamdani think of Intro. 1096 after winning the primary? He isn’t saying—at least not to Work-Bites.
“The spirit of the legislation’s one that it’s only required if the mayor continues to oppose these rulings,” Mamdani said last year. “So, I support the spirit of it right now, and as the next mayor it would not even be required given what my polices would be on the issue.”
The political gamesmanship continues this week, leaving those who have given so much to the City of New York City to wonder just how much longer they will have the Traditional Medicare benefits they earned after decades on the job.
And if New York City’s political cowardice doesn’t destroy what has made all those “good city jobs” so good in the first place—Donald Trump and Project 2025 just might. As this story was going to press, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services [CMS] announced that beginning next year, prior authorizations—the same roadblocks responsible for Medicare Advantage’s infamous delays and denials of care—will be introduced to Traditional Medicare.
Work-Bites will have more on that part of the story shortly.