Put Up or Shut Up: Time for the NYC Council to Prove it Stands with Retirees Fighting to Save Traditional Medicare

New York City Council: You Can Fix This. That was true when municipal retirees fighting to save their traditional Medicare coverage rallied outside the gates of City Hall back in April, and it’s true now. Photo by Joe Maniscalco

By Joe Maniscalco

Former profit-driven health insurance industry insider turned profit-driven health insurance industry foil Wendell Potter thinks it’s possible to “at least begin to slow” the privatization of traditional Medicare, but that we need Democrats running both houses of Congress and the White House.

“We've got to have, to a certain extent, a perfect storm once again, to elect Democrats to control the Senate and the House and the White House before we can expect meaningful progress, I think, in reining in the abuses of this industry,” Potter said during a webinar on “Medicare Privatization Schemes” held Monday night.

Potter showed up strong at a New York City Council hearing back in January and delivered powerful testimony on behalf of municipal retirees fighting the ongoing campaign to strip them of the traditional Medicare coverage they were promised,  and push them into a privatized program run by insurance industry giant Aetna.

However, characterizing Democrats as retirees’ best hope to protect their traditional Medicare benefits from privatization contradicts the reality of what’s been happening on the streets of New York City the past few years, where the most powerful Democrats in town have been, and continue to be, the ones pushing the hardest to herd municipal retirees into a Medicare Advantage program — a program that’s gonna make its money delaying and denying care to recipients.

The few not pushing so hard to usher in the privatized health insurance industry’s agenda, haven’t exactly been moving heaven and earth to stop it. That’s either because they’re complicit or have triangulated themselves into irrelevancy.

It’s much the same story in California where legislative efforts to beat back ACO REACH — a warmed over Trump-era program launched January 1 that opponents fear will “end traditional Medicare as we know it” — ran into heavy opposition from powerful Democrats in the Golden State.

Potter is certainly not oblivious to what’s going on, even if during this week’s webinar he called the behavior of Democrats “dismaying.” According to him, however, Democrats have just fallen prey to lots of silver-tongued health insurance salespeople pushing the wonders of privatization.

“You've got so many Democrats that have been influenced, I think unwittingly, by the lobbyists for the [private healthcare] industry,” Potter said. “Keep in mind that these lobbyists are human beings that are successful by developing relationships and being seen as trustworthy, providing credible information. They don't deserve that in many cases. They absolutely are not doing that, but that's how you are able to get even members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to sign on as supporters of Medicare Advantage and the ACO REACH program.”

Instead of being the “end of traditional Medicare as we know it,” these elected officials, Potter says, “have been led to believe that these programs can protect the solvency of the Medicare program, so they fall for stuff like that.”

As Potter further pointed out, many members of Congress have a “very shallow understanding of healthcare.”

“And you also add the phenomenon, again related to money in politics, of  lobbyists at their doorstep all the time with slickly-packaged information. And you have on the other side [of the struggle], very infrequent visitors,” Potter continued. “So, there's this great imbalance. The people don't have that kind of representation.”

In New York City, Potter says both former Mayor Bill de Blasio and current Mayor Eric Adams have fallen for the “siren call from the industry that the city could save millions of dollars by moving retirees into Medicare Advantage plans.”

That’s despite mountains of evidence to the contrary — and armies of traditional Medicare advocates who have been earnestly trying over the last two or more years to break through that supposed bubble.

Fooled, tricked, complicit or just self-serving — whatever the possible explanation may be for failing to protect traditional Medicare coverage for municipal retirees who’ve earned it — Democrats, indeed, every single elected official in the New York City Council, now has the opportunity to prove they are fighting on behalf of constituents who refuse to be pushed into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage scheme.

Brooklyn lawmaker Charles Barron was expected to introduce proposed retiree legislation on Thursday, June 8, aimed at protecting traditional Medicare benefits for municipal workers. Introduction of the retiree bill has been postponed.

Will it happen? Will Barron’s fellow City Council members join with him in backing the legislation if it is introduced? 

Let’s see.

The concurrent rally municipal retiree groups had planned to hold outside the gates of City Hall on June 8, has been postponed, as well, due to dangerous air quality.

That rally is also reportedly being rescheduled.