By Joe Maniscalco

The supposedly most progressive New York City Council to date could choose to advance proposed legislation protecting traditional Medicare benefits for municipal retirees — instead it’s watching ailing senior citizens fighting for what they’ve earned collapse on the streets in protest, and being out-lefted by Republican colleagues.

Roughly 1,000 New York City municipal retirees and their supporters rallied outside the gates of City Hall on Tuesday, April 11, calling on Speaker Adrienne Adams and the rest her Democratic colleagues in the City Council to support retiree legislation introduced back in December that could save traditional Medicare health insurance from being replaced by a profit-driven Aetna Medicare Advantage program.

Work-Bites observed at least three elderly people needing medical attention during the course of the large and boisterous afternoon rally.

“The Speaker of the City Council Adrienne Adams is following the directions of the mayor, and being told not to give our bill a number,” New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees President Marianne Pizzitola told protesters on Broadway. “They’re refusing to release our bill…have it introduced…won’t give it a number. So, it’s just sitting there.”

The rationale given for the inaction stems from New York’s Public Employees’ Fair Employment Act — the Taylor Law, which stipulates the terms of collective bargaining for municipal employees. But the public sector unions subject to the Taylor Law only bargain on behalf of active workers — not retirees.

“They told us our bill was preempted by Taylor — and we called bulls—t on that because we’re not subject to Taylor,” Pizzitola added.

DC37 Retirees Organization President Robert Gervasi denounced “pulling the rug out” from underneath municipal retirees who, once they’re forced into Aetna’s profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan, face well-documented delays, denials and limited choice of doctors.

“We need the unions to understand, we need choice,” Gervasi said. “We don’t need one option to be available when so many of the people here are used to seeing their doctors for what…twenty…twenty-five…thirty years? It’s not the time to change things on retirees.”

Protesters blasted the heads of New York City’s most powerful public sector unions — United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew, District Council 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido and Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] President Harry Nespoli as “scabs” for driving the ongoing campaign to strip retirees of their traditional Medicare benefits and push them into a profit-driven, scandal-plagued Medicare Advantage program.

“We know that in this country healthcare is broken,” Neal Frumkin, District Council 37 Retirees Association vice-president for Inter-Union Relations said. “It goes up faster than inflation. And it’s been going up like that for years. In response to that, unfortunately, our union leaders didn’t take on big Pharma; they didn’t take on the medical establishment; they didn’t take on the hospital establishment — they went after us. What we’ve seen is a massive distribution of costs from the insurance companies to us.”

Retired FDNY Deputy Chief Richard Alles jeered Mayor Eric Adams as a “hypocrite” for calling Medicare Advantage a “bait and switch” on the campaign trail — but is now its biggest proponent.

“I made a simple and moral contract with the City of New York that if I were to protect the citizens of New York, they guaranteed me just two simple things: my pension and my health benefit,” Alles said. “Now, they want to take that away — No Effing Way!”

NEVER FORGET - EXCEPT WHEN IT COMES TO MONEY

Like Alles, the municipal retirees fighting the privatization of their traditional Medicare benefits at this week’s rally are responsible for seeing New York City through some of the worst calamities in this town’s history — including the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

But, as Pizzitola pointed out, being stripped of their traditional Medicare benefits means civilian survivors of 9/11 are now subject to “prior authorizations” and a “narrowed network.”

“And rather than having the ease of just going to any doctor in America that takes Medicare, you are only allowed to go to whatever doctors that are in their network,” Pizzitola said. “And if you choose to go out of the network, you are then going to have to go through ‘pre-visit confirmations’ — which is another fancy word for prior-authorization — which delay and deny your care.”

John Feal, 9/11 first-responder and fierce advocate for the 9/11 Victim’s Compensation Fund, was as blunt as you can be.

“F—-k the MLC,” he said. “You people are retirees for a reason — you survived twenty, thirty, forty years working for this city. F—-k you to anybody that tries to take away your healthcare.”

The fiery 9/11 activist said the rally should be “down the street in Mike Mulgrew’s face.”

“Who here is in the World Trade Center Health Program?” Feal asked. “You’re f——d. The City of New York will f—k you now if you are in the World Trade Center Health Program. If you’re in the program and the doctor sends you to see a specialist — you’re gonna have to wait for your new insurance to approve it? Get the f—k outta here! Never underestimate small numbers. We went to Washington, D.C. and handed Congress their f—-ing balls. Now, we’re gonna give New York City its balls.”

Former Democratic Party-turned Republican Party City Council Member Ari Kagan of Brooklyn, said saving municipal retirees’ traditional Medicare benefits isn’t a “Democratic or Republican issue.”

“This is a human issue,” he said. “I don’t buy any explanation that we don’t have money to provide healthcare to municipal retirees.”

The Adams administration says pushing municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage program will save the city $600 million a year.

Work-Bites reached out to the Mayor’s Office for comment on this story, but has been unsuccessful.

When asked what he and his Republican colleagues in the Common Sense Caucus will do to help advance proposed legislation in the City Council to protect traditional Medicare for municipal retirees, Kagan told Work-Bites, “Public pressure — that’s the only way to do it.”

Democratic Council Member Charles Barron, also of Brooklyn, told protesters New York has plenty of money to fulfill its obligations to municipal retirees, and said any City Council member who voices support for traditional Medicare, but then “goes inside and votes for a budget that doesn’t have your six million dollars in it — they are betraying our cause.”

The organizers of this week’s rally for traditional Medicare benefits plan on being back out on the streets shortly, and “going into the districts” of City Council members to “remind them of the promise that this city made to us.” 

“What is happening is manipulative — it contradicts everything that unions have stood for, which shocks me,” 82-year-old Brooklynite Arnie Rothstein told Work-Bites. “It’s a sellout. I think Adams is really an extension of [former Mayor Bill] de Blasio.”

Rothstein, whose wife Barbara is a retired school teacher, said Medicare benefits are the same as pensions.

“They were negotiated, they are grandfathered in,” he said. “They have no right to do this.”

Pizzitola later criticized MLC members who voted for Aetna’s Medicare Advantage contract, saying in a YouTube video posted after the rally, “Not only did you screw retirees — you just screwed yourselves. But don’t feel bad, Pat Lynch from the PBA [Police Benevolent Association] just did the same thing — and he stepped down today.”