Retirees Fighting Medicare Advantage ‘Fed Up’ With More NYC Council Inaction!
If municipal retirees have a true champion inside the NYC Council will you please stand up?
By Joe Maniscalco
New York City municipal retirees still looking for a champion inside the City Council to reintroduce a bill protecting their existing Medicare health insurance benefits from the onslaught of so-called Medicare Advantage and privatization are gonna have to keep on searching.
All this despite successive court decisions ruling against Mayor Eric Adams’ ongoing Medicare Advantage push and dwindling support from the scheme’s chief proponents in labor.
Retirees speaking to Work-Bites had indicated that City Council Member and Intro. 1099 cosponsor Inna Vernikov [R-48th District] might be next in line to take up the bill and reintroduce it in some form.
However, when reached for comment this week, Vernikov’s office would only say the minority whip is “excited to see that the retirees are winning in court, and she unequivocally supports them in their fight.”
“We are hopeful that the victories will continue and that a statewide bill will emerge to protect their healthcare further,” the office said. “This is something our office is planning to keep a close eye on.”
Introduced last year into the Committee on Civil Service and Labor by former City Council Member Charles Barron [D-42nd District]—Intro. 1099 immediately became radioactive when both Speaker Adrienne Adams [D-28th District] and the heads of the largest public sector unions in the city started warning members to steer clear of it.
"It's so easy to sit back and wait for the courts or the state to do something,” retired UFT teacher and Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee [CROC] member Sarah Shapiro told Work-Bites. “But we elected these city officials to actually work for us! Pledging your support and keeping a close eye on things is another way of saying, ‘I'm going to sit here and do nothing.’ That's not good enough.”
Stu Eber, president of the Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations [COMRO] says retirees want both the New York City Council and the New York State Legislature to protect their traditional non-privatized Medicare coverage.
“They don’t have to wait for the courts to decide the four pending cases to eliminate the unions’ and the City’s threats to our promised retirement benefits,” Eber told Work-Bites.
This past spring, municipal retirees—9/11 first-responders and the surviving spouses of 9/11 first-responders among them—traveled more than 150 miles and plied the halls of state power in Albany for more than two hours in a failed effort to win passage of a state level counterpart to Intro. 1099 also aimed at protecting their traditional non-privatized Medicare benefits.
New York municipal retirees packed Albany-bound buses in April to push for statewide legislation protecting their traditional non-privatized Medicare benefits. Photo/Joe Maniscalco
Mayor Adams, meanwhile, continues to bet the highest court in the state will give him the green light to go ahead and push 250,000 city retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan despite losing a string of court defeats blocking the administration from already making that happen.
Last month, United Federation of Teachers [UFT] President Michael Mulgrew— one-third of the triumvirate of union leaders along with District Council 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido and Municipal Labor Committee Chair Harry Nespoli behind the Medicare Advantage push—abruptly changed course and withdrew his union’s support of the plan after watching Retiree Advocate members seize control of the UFT’s 70,000-member Retired Teachers Chapter.
Just two weeks ago, however, Council Member Shahana Hanif [D-39th District] told Work-Bites at a Medicare rally in Brooklyn that her City Council colleagues certainly “empathize with the [retirees’] cause,” but that “the challenge remains we have these labor unions presenting a bit of an obstacle.”
In September, the New York Daily News reported how Henry Garrido was threatening to pull his union’s support from any New York City Council member sympathetic to Barron’s bill protecting retiree healthcare from Medicare Advantage.
“I think we’re gonna have to draw the line in the sand, and I’m prepared to do that,” the Daily News quoted Garrido. “I’m prepared to withdraw support…money, endorsements—everything. Field ops, what we do, phone banks, all the stuff that we do for all the electeds is going to have to be questioned.”
And although, Mulgrew announced he no longer supports the Medicare Advantage push, critics inside the UFT point out that he hasn’t actually denounced Medicare Advantage itself, and isn’t actively doing anything to stop Mayor Adams’ ongoing attempts to implement it.
CROC member Lizette Colon said municipal retirees are “simply fed up” with “reading good wishes from our New York City Council members.”
“Time is past due for them to finally represent us,” she told Work-Bites. “Move from ‘supporting’ messages to real action. Pass, once and for all, the long-due legislation to enshrine our earned healthcare rights.”
Fellow CROC member Roberta Pikser is still holding out some hope that Vernikov might still reintroduce Intro. 1099.
“The Councilwoman is full of hope and good wishes, apparently waiting for someone else to do the actual work,” Pikser said. “What we need is her active participation. We hope she will help us."