UFT Head Michael Mulgrew Is Against the Medicare Advantage Push in NYC? What’s He Doing to Stop it?
New York City municipal retirees fighting to protect their Medicare benefits from privatization ride a float during this year's Labor Day Parade. Photo/J. Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
After helping to spearhead the ongoing campaign to push 250,000 New York City municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan, UFT President Michael Mulgrew now says the union is “firmly against a Medicare Advantage plan for our retirees.”
Not only that, the UFT leader also says he’s worried about opponents trying to “chip away” at real Medicare and Social Security.
“Our members pay into Medicare and Social Security throughout their career, and we cannot let opponents chip away at these programs,” Mulgrew told UFT Retired Teachers Chapter Leader Bennett Fischer in August. “Our retirement security depends on them and we will fight to keep them safe.”
That raises a number of very salient questions New York City retirees—many of them battling cancer and other life-threatening diseases—would like to have answers to right about now.
Michael Mulgrew has been the president of the United Federation of Teachers since 2009.
To start off, if Mulgrew is, in fact, “firmly against a Medicare Advantage plan for our retirees,” what is he actually doing to stop it from happening? Mayor Eric Adams’ administration is still plowing ahead with the scheme— and the New York State Court of Appeals could ultimately decide to let Hizzoner get away with it.
Mulgrew attempted to send a letter to the high court making sure the judges at the very least knew, for the record, that the UFT no longer supports the City of New York’s continuing campaign to force a Medicare Advantage plan onto municipal retirees. But the court refused to enter that letter into the record, thank you very much, on procedural grounds.
Okay, now what? If President Mulgrew and the UFT is “firmly against a Medicare Advantage plan for our retirees” what’s the next move? How does Mulgrew and the rest of the UFT make sure the union’s official opposition to the ongoing Medicare Advantage scheme is on the record?
What does Mulgrew and the UFT do now to help stop the Medicare Advantage train still barreling down on New York City retirees? Is throwing up your hands and saying, “Oh, well, we tried” the end of it?
Many retirees who devoted their working lives to the City of New York have already had their lives upended and their continuity of care threatened after being tossed into a Medicare Advantage plan.
Retired TWU Local 100 Transit worker Marc Franklin is 75 and now lives in Florida. This year, he and his wife lost the doctor they had been seeing for the last 20 years after their trusted family physician decided to stop accepting Aetna Medicare Advantage.
“My wife and I are very uncomfortable with this as we are happy and used to my doctor for over 20 years,” Franklin recently wrote to Work-Bites. “I’d like to know if anything can be done to give us a choice of insurance companies so that we may be able to go back to my original doctor.”
Franklin’s predicament is being replicated across the country as more and more New York City retirees are confronted with doctors and hospitals who no longer accept Aetna Medicare Advantage.
Privatization foes long ago predicted this would happen. Over the last three years of the Medicare Advantage fight in New York City there have been extensive nationwide studies, research papers, and reporting done on the delays, denials of care, and reduced access to doctors and hospitals associated with profit-driven Medicare Advantage plans .
Nevertheless, Mulgrew still insists the Aetna Medicare Advantage plan he no longer supports for New York City municipal retirees is not a diminishment of existing benefits.
The UFT head insists the union pulled its support of the Medicare Advantage push in New York City because it understands the “anxiety and concern overwhelmingly expressed by UFT retires”—in the same breath, however, there’s still a steadfast refusal to acknowledge the validity of retirees’ “anxiety and concerns.” Is that just how they feel—with no actual basis in reality?
How have all the studies, research papers, reporting, and testimonials—not to mention the string of lower court decisions all affirming Medicare Advantage’s negative impact on patient care—not caused Mulgrew to rethink the legitimacy of the Aetna Medicare Advantage plan he only now stopped supporting for New York City retirees?
New York City municipal retirees insist that the profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan the Adams Administration still hopes to foist on them would mean high out-of-pocket costs, denied access to doctors, and prior authorizations that prevent needed treatment.
But Mulgrew dismisses those concerns as “patently false” allegations and further says the pending lawsuit that could finally put the nail in the Aetna Medicare Advantage coffin is responsible for “spreading harmful misinformation.”
That’s even harder to comprehend given Mulgrew’s stated concern over those trying to “chip away” at Medicare and Social Security. If privatized and deceptively-named Medicare Advantage plans aren’t chipping away at the heart of Medicare—real, traditional Medicare—then what are they doing?
What is UFT President Michael Mulgrew doing?