NYC Retirees: Marte Bill Will Finally ‘Shut the Door’ on Campaign to Diminish Our Healthcare!
Members of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees backing a successor bill to City Council Intro. 1096 also travelled back to Albany last month to push for statewide action, too.
By Joe Maniscalco
Has the election of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, as a recent UFT Delegate Assembly resolution declared, “definitively ended the immediate danger” of New York City municipal retirees being stripped of their Traditional Medicare and pushed into a predatory Medicare Advantage health insurance plan?
Well, has Mamdani’s victory last fall “definitively ended the immediate danger” of public housing tenants in Chelsea losing their communities to privatization and demolition?
Has it “definitively ended the immediate danger” of New York City home care workers being subjected to modern day slavery and institutionalized wage theft?
So far, the answer to at least two of those questions is a resounding “No. It has not.”
Nevertheless, the UFT resolution included in last Wednesday’s Delegate Assembly agenda by former UFT Vice-President Leo Casey, but not voted on, outlined the rosy assessment of Mamdani’s victory and its impact on the ongoing Medicare Advantage fight this way:
“WHEREAS the election of UFT endorsed Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of New York City has definitively ended the immediate danger that UFT and other NYC municipal retirees would lose our traditional Medicare and be transferred into a Medicare Advantage plan against our will, as Mamdani has unequivocally committed himself to the UFT’s position in support of maintaining traditional Medicare, and
“WHEREAS the threat to retirement and health care security from New York City government has receded, a major and severe danger has taken shape in Washington DC, where President Trump and MAGA Republicans in Congress have mounted various attacks on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid…
“THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the UFT and its Retiree Chapter develop a comprehensive organizing campaign to defend Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid…”
Members of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees supporting pending state and local legislation to protect their healthcare from diminishment march into the State Capitol in Albany on March 24.
In other words, do not look to the UFT to help pass new legislation from City Council Member Chris Marte to succeed Intro. 1096—the council member’s long languishing bill aimed at legally preventing anyone from diminishing the Medicare and MediGap coverage retirees earned after decades on the job—because members should all be too busy battling Trump and MAGA Republicans.
But New York City municipal retirees who in June 2025 succeeded in forcing former Mayor Eric Adams to abandon the Medicare Advantage push after a five-year-long battle—and who continue to press the fight against privatization now—certainly do not think Mamdani’s victorious mayoral run has “definitively ended” anything.
And neither does Council Member Marte who this week remains in a desperate struggle with Mayor Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin to finally pass the “No More 24” bill on the behalf of elderly New York City home care workers subjected to institutionalized wage theft and mandatory round-the-clock shifts.
“Trump supports shifting to Medicare Advantage, so I think we should fight against that, too,” Council Member Marte told Work-Bites as home care workers continued their hunger strike outside the gates of City Hall on Tuesday.”
“Trump supports shifting to Medicare Advantage—so I think we should fight against that, too,” Council Member Marte told Work-Bites as home care workers continued their hunger strike outside the gates of City Hall last week.
Intro. 303—the “No More 24” bill—got a City Council hearing in February, but still hasn’t been allowed onto the floor for a vote. And while some procedural shenanigans in the City Council have held up Intro. 1096’s successor, Marte continues to draft a new retiree bill, which he expects to introduce by this summer.
Marianne Pizzitola, head of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees, said that we should all be united nationally in the fight to protect and strengthen Medicare and Social Security, but that
“Local action can close the door on efforts to diminish coverage, privatize Medicare, or shift more costs onto retirees living on fixed incomes, especially when pensions do not keep pace with inflation.”
“priority should be on the local level with unions standing together with Retirees now to pass city and state legislation that provides immediate protections for earned Medicare benefits.”
“Local action can close the door on efforts to diminish coverage, privatize Medicare, or shift more costs onto retirees living on fixed incomes, especially when pensions do not keep pace with inflation,” she told Work-Bites this week.
UFT retiree and 1096 advocate Arthur Goldstein said that Mayor Mamdani has already betrayed several key campaign positions, and that placing blind faith in him to protect retiree healthcare from further attacks just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
“Mayor Mamdani already broke my heart when he reneged on his promise to oppose mayoral control,” Goldstein told Work-Bites this week. “He’s also gone back on affordable housing, and he’s also turned his back on the UFT para bill—to assume that because he said he supports [retirees] that he will is foolish and baseless.”
Casey, however, insists there is no local or state law that could block federal legislation changing Medicare by placing new recipients into Medicare Advantage plans, “thus beginning a phase out of traditional Medicare.”
“This is a matter of constitutional law: the Supremacy Clause [Article VI, Clause 2] means that federal legislation on a federal government program would override any state or local law which contradicted it,” Casey told Work-Bites in an email this week. “That is why no one who is genuinely concerned about real threats to Medicare and the real danger of imposing Medicare Advantage upon retirees would be wasting their time on non-existent threats from NYC, while ignoring very real ones from Washington DC.”
Goldstein, however, charges that the UFT’s entrenched Unity Caucus leadership is just trying to muzzle some inconvenient opposition from militant retirees still determined to protect the healthcare they earned after decades on the job.
“[The UFT leadership] wants us to divert our attention from 1096, which we were elected to protect and promote—and they want us to look at national issues,” he said. “This is further ironic because I've been in many, many UFT Delegate Assembly meetings—and often they say, ‘Well, that's an issue for the AFT—our national body.’ They want us to stop supporting 1096—they want us to stop protecting ourselves. They find it a nuisance.”
UFT Retired Teachers Chapter member Gloria Brandman told Work-Bites at another “No More 24” rally outside the gates of City Hall on April 16, that she is happy Council Member Marte is working on a successor bill to Intro. 1096—and that she personally supports it.
The group has repeatedly passed resolutions in support of Intro. 1096. in the past, but Mamdani’s mayoral win has splintered the resolve some have to help get a reintroduced bill to the floor for a full City Council vote.
“The Retired Teachers Chapter of the UFT supported 1096, and we’ll have people support the new one after we read it,” Brandman said. “We will do what we can to help get it passed. We have a working group—we don’t agree with the UFT leadership.”
Members of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees distributed this flyer to elected officials in Albany last month.
Mulgrew’s June 2024 decision to pull the UFT’s support for the Medicare Advantage push only came after the Retiree Advocates/UFT slate and others opposed to the Medicare Advantage scheme won control of the 70,000-member UFT Retired Teachers Chapter.
Then mayoral-candidate Zohran Mamdani later, however, turned heads when he told Work-Bites in November 2024 that he was “firmly opposed to privatization and Mayor Adams’ reckless attempts to strip municipal retirees from the traditional Medicare benefits they were promised”—but that Intro. 1096 “would not even be required given what my policies would be on the issue.”
A UFT spokesperson reached for comment on this story, meanwhile, said the union opposes Council Member Marte’s pending retiree bill “because it would diminish unions’ ability to negotiate healthcare."
New York City municipal retirees advocating for Intro. 1096 and its successor have long dismissed that argument.
“It is disingenuous to claim that the reason why the UFT or the MLC [Municipal Labor Committee] is opposed to the bill is because it would somehow interfere with collective bargaining,” New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees attorney Jake Gardener told Work-Bites. “It would just interfere with the MLC's ability to throw retirees under the bus. They can bargain for whatever retiree healthcare benefits they want, but they can't negotiate to take away the healthcare benefits of people who are already retired and don't have a seat at the bargaining table.”
The Mayor’s Office did not respond to, or acknowledge repeated requests for comment on this story.