NYC Retirees Renew Calls to Pass Intro. 1096 Before boarding Albany Buses to Hear Latest Medicare Advantage Case

NYC municipal retirees battling the Medicare Advantage push gather at 250 Broadway on Thursday morning before heading to Albany to hear final arguments in the latest case before the NYS Court of Appeals. Photos/Joe Maniscalco

Thanks for reading! If you value this reporting and would like to help keep Work-Bites on the job AND GROWING, please consider donating whatever you can today. Work-Bites is a completely independent 501c3 nonprofit news organization dedicated to our readers — and we need your support! Invite friends, family, and co-workers to subscribe to the Work-Bites Wake Up Call!!

By Joe Maniscalco

Whether or not the New York State Court of Appeals ultimately delivers a ruling blocking New York City Mayor Eric Adams from stripping municipal retirees of their Traditional Medicare benefits, retirees insist legislation in the City Council protecting them must be enacted.

Sponsored last fall by Council Member Chris Marte, Intro. 1096 essentially says the City of New York must continue to provide former civil servants and their Medicare-eligible dependents at least one Medigap plan with benefits equivalent or better than those available as of Dec. 31, 2021. In other words, Eric Adams—and whoever follows him in office—cannot push municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan.

The bill continues to languish, however, with just 14 co-sponsors signed on at the time of this writing. Council Member Darlene Mealy [D-41st District] was briefly on the bill, but withdrew support this week after receiving a re-election endorsement from the United Federation of Teachers [UFT].

Mayor Adams signed a five-year Medicare Advantage contract with Aetna back in 2023, and had hoped to auto-enroll municipal retirees in the plan by September 1 of that year. But retirees kept fighting back, and NYC Comptroller Brad Lander declined to register the contract. Adams essentially overruled him.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew officially pulled his union endorsement of the Medicare Advantage push after union retirees rose up and won control of the Retired Teachers Chapter last year. But Mulgrew, along with retired Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] Chair Harry Nespoli and District Council 37 Executive Henry Garrido had been the biggest proponents of the Medicare Advantage push in NYC. 

And while Mulgrew officially backed away from the Medicare Advantage push, leaving the Adams Administration and the MLC at odds over what to do next, he hasn’t exactly renounced the privatization plan as a bad thing. Garrido, head of the largest public sector union in the city, continues to push Medicare Advantage hard and made it painfully clear that he will use his position to help shut down the electoral ambitions of anybody thinking about supporting Marte’s retiree bill.

"No matter what happens, even if we win we still need this bill passed and we’re gonna start putting pressure as soon as this is over,” New York City Organizaiton of Public Service Retirees President Marianne Pizzitola told municipal retirees boarding two Albany-bound buses on Thursday morning to hear final oral arguments in the latest Medicare Advantage case.

“We have a lot of politicians who like to stand and say, ‘We support universal healthcare. We support retirees. But when you look at who’s on the bills—especially 1096—many aren’t,” Council Member Marte told Work-Bites before buses departed. “I think it shows a lot of hypocrisy.”

New York City retiree and cancer survivor Roberta Gonzalez said that she’s felt like a “yo-yo going back and forth,” over the last four years battling the Medicare Advantage push. But she expressed hope that retirees will be able to add another favorable ruling to their string of 11-court victories.

TWU Local 100 Retirees President Lloyd Archer gets ready to join fellow retirees bound for Albany to hear final oral arguments in the latest case against the Medicare Advantage push.

“I’m disappointed that it’s taken this long,” Gonzalez told Work-Bites. “I’m spending my grandchildren’s inheritance on this cause. But it's important to set a precedent now and for the future.”

Gonzalez was one of the many New York City municipal retirees who were told to go back to work in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

TWU Local 100 Retirees President Lloyd Archer remembers what that was like, too. The former bus operator stood on the sidewalk outside 250 Broadway on Thursday morning and talked about driving through blankets of dust filling the bus lanes after the World Trade Center was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. His brother, retired NYPD, was on the scene, too, and is now battling lymphoma.

Archer’s group filed suit last year after TWU Local 100—the union representing New York City’s Transit workers—went ahead and auto-enrolled retirees into an Aetna Medicare Advantage health insurance plan. They, like their City counterparts, opposed the move citing the delays and denials of care that are features of predatory Medicare Advantage plans. They’re also waiting for a favorable decision in their case.

“Today, I’m hoping maybe that if [NYC municipal retirees] win the case today it will tip [our judge] to give us the decision,” Archer told Work-Bites.

Gonzalez said she didn’t know what to expect in court on Thursday, but feared “the climate” in NYC, as well as the rest of the country, is not in favor of working and retired people.

“People on the top are gonna work the people on the bottom and take as much as they can out of them, and give us a pittance in return so that we can keep living and supplying them with what they need,” she said. “That includes everybody that makes the country run. I feel like they’re vultures living off of us.”

Last week, the Dept. of Justice filed a “false claims act” against three national health insurance companies and brokers—including Aetna—alleging unlawful kickbacks and discrimination against the disabled.