NYC’s Medicare Advantage Push vs. the Medicare Advantage Pushback: Look Who’s Winning Now
New York City Mayor Eric Adams may be regretting the Medicare Advantage push.
By Joe Maniscalco
A couple of years ago, Mayor Eric Adams defended trying to strip 250,000 municipal retirees of their Traditional Medicare benefits and throwing them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan in the the worst ways possible on two separate occasions in Brooklyn where Work-Bites was present.
The first time, despite previously describing the Medicare Advantage push as a “bait & switch,” Hizzoner said he sat down with the heads of the UFT, Teamsters, and DC37—“those who are elected to represent populations”— to discuss the scheme, and yeah, they were all totally cool with it. They wanted it.
Later that fall, Adams sharply told retirees, “I've heard from all of you—I’ve heard it over and over. But your union leadership has put this plan together.”
Mayor Adams’ responses referencing UFT President Michael Mulgrew, Sanitationmen’s Association head Harry Nespoli (now retired), and District Council 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido, were either a stunning example of piss-poor mayoral leadership or a nakedly disingenuous dodge.
Take your pick.
In the first case, the mayor’s responses showed he really didn’t understand that the leaders of those public sector unions he cited—either on their own or as the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC]—cannot bargain for retirees once they leave the job.
The mayor’s responses also showed he did not know those union heads certainly did not have the support of union retirees to do what they were attempting to do.
Those responses further demonstrated that Hizzoner was also clueless about those union heads actually being the objects of scorn and ridicule from other New York City union leaders and rank & file members who view the entire Medicare Advantage scheme as a shameful sellout to everything the American labor movement is supposed to be about.
Both Correction Captains’ Association President Patrick Ferraiuolo and Subway-Surface Supervisors Association President Michael Carrube denounced efforts to push City and MTA retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan in the strongest terms when Work-Bites asked them about it.
“How was another union allowed to take money from a stabilization fund for their contract? That’s another thing that’s hard to comprehend,” Ferraiuolo said. “How does that even happen when the stabilization fund is supposed to be used for the health and welfare benefits for any member of the Municipal Labor Committee — not to fund your contract.”
“They should not be labor leaders in my book,” Carrube said. “I don't have any respect for none of them. They put their unions back fifty, sixty years.”
If that wasn’t enough, the mayor’s responses in Brooklyn also demonstrated a staggering ignorance about the fractious reality of the MLC itself. Does the mayor of New York City not understand that the MLC is hardly a democratically-oriented institution representative of the more than 100 unions who belong to it?
As Ferraiuolo told Work-Bites in March 2023, “Even though I have a vote it doesn’t mean anything because all it takes is the teacher’s union [UFT], DC37 to vote and everybody else’s vote is null and void because they carry that much weight.”
This week, a dissident group inside District Council 37 challenging Executive Director Henry Garrido’s leadership told Work-Bites that they, too, oppose the Medicare Advantage push.
“Our position is that we oppose the privatization of Medicare and any attacks on health care—whether for current DC37 members or retirees,” a group spokesperson said in an email. “We have been in contact with retirees advocating on this issue and, should we win this election, we look forward to working closely with them to fight for the health care members were promised when they retire.”
That’s a staggering amount of real world information for any New York City mayor contemplating blowing up retiree health care to be oblivious about. Too much, in fact.
Of course, in the second case scenario Mayor Eric Adams was actually well aware of all these realities when he was challenged in Brooklyn. But instead willfully chose to turn a blind eye and forge ahead with the Medicare Advantage scheme he once denounced as "devastating” and a "bait & switch” using the thinnest veneer of credibility imaginable.
Well, it didn’t work.
All of this information is readily available. It exists. And any mayor—any good mayor—would have been aware of it, and factored it into his decision-making process. The current mayor, nevertheless, continues to use the same old defense to keep pushing the Medicare Advantage scheme in court. Exactly how much money is NYC spending litigating these cases anyway?
New York City municipal retirees have another court date in Albany on Thursday, May 15. They’ve already racked up 11 court victories preventing the MLC and the City of New York from stripping the health care benefits they were promised. But they will once again board buses later this week and press the fight.
They are in their 70s, 80s, and 90s. Too many are battling cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. Eric Adams and the heads of the MLC know all this, too, but they keep persisting.
Well, not exactly.
MLC Chair Harry Nespoli decided last week that now’s a good time to retire, and UFT President Michael Mulgrew long ago found it necessary to withdraw his union’s support for the Medicare Advantage push after Medicare Advantage foes rose up and seized control of the UFT Retired Teachers Chapter. He’s also fighting for his political life and could soon be ousted as union head. Garrido’s days as DC 37’s head honcho could also be coming to a close in the not too distant future.
Adams, meanwhile, finds himself amongst the odd men out in a large field of mayoral candidates now vying to unseat him this fall who have all pledged to abandon the Medicare Advantage push if elected.
Maybe getting talked into Medicare Advantage wasn’t such a good idea after all.