‘If I Hear the Damn Stabilization Fund One More Time - I’m Going to Scream!’
Few things frustrate New York City municipal retirees fighting to retain their Medicare benefits more than hearing the Health Stabilization Fund has been depleted and there’s now no way to cover retiree health care costs without pushing everybody into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan.
By Joe Maniscalco
“If I hear the damn stabilization fund one more time, I'm going to scream,” New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees recently told Work-Bites.
Pizzitola was reacting to CWA Local 1180 President and Municipal Labor Committee trustee Gloria Middleton’s recent assertion that Covid depleted New York City’s Health Stabilization Fund — thereby ostensibly leaving privatization and Medicare Advantage the only viable way for the City of New York to cover the health care costs of its municipal retirees.
“We had a stabilization fund that we could still pull money out of to pay for the health care plan,” Middleton told Work-Bites. “And because of the rising cost of health care — it’s because of the rising cost of retirees that certainly left the workforce after the pandemic — it could not be sustained.”
As a result, Middlton continued, the MLC “sat down with the city to see what plan we could come up with that with the amenable to making sure that our retirees could have a health care that they didn't have to pay a premium for.”
“This money just doesn't grow on trees, okay? We have to make sure the money is in the city budget to pay for retirees,” Middleton added. “We used to have the Stabilization Fund that would do that — that money is gone.”
In reality, the real reason the Health Stabilization Fund was depleted, according to municipal retirees challenging the Medicare Advantage push — is because it was used to cover municipal raises dating back to 2014 and the glorious administration of former Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“They allowed it to bankrupt because of their own bad decisions,” Pizzitola told Work-Bites. “Even the Office of Labor Relations’ own letter on OLR’s website says that they didn't need Medicare Advantage to meet the savings benchmark — they needed it to finance the Stabilization Fund which doesn't pay a Medicare eligible retirees health premium. So, it allows Gloria to stay premium free, it allows the City Council, and the mayor to stay premium free — because you sold off grandma and grandpa.”
The EMS retiree further added, “If their 2014 and 2018 agreements didn't permit the teachers to take a billion dollars out of the Health Fund — and they didn't further suppress the HIP rates, which caused the Stabilization Fund to drain faster because the spread between those two plans was now larger — and if they didn't allow the other unions to pull $165 a person active and retired out of the Stabilization Fund as the quid pro quo to that 2014 agreement — they might have money in there to pay for their health care.”
Middleton, however, dismisses that assessment.
“That’s a falsehood, just let me say that,” she told Work-Bites. “That’s not true at all.”
When Work-Bites asked pointblank where all that Stabilization money actually went — Middleton again said, “the cost of health care.”
“The pandemic came, remember that, and health care went through the roof,” Middleton said. “People were hospitalized and on ventilators for days and weeks — that cost rose to the level you would not even comprehend.”
Pizzitola says Covid didn’t come out of the Stabilization Fund.
“The Stabilization Fund does not pay for a Medicare eligible retiree,” she told Work-Bites. “The Stabilization Fund pays for active workers and under 65 retiree premium differences between GHI CBP, the most favorite plan between actives and retirees, and HIP HMO, the benchmark.”
The City of New York’s ongoing campaign to push municipal retirees into Medicare Advantage continues this week, even as nationwide criticism about the privatization of real Medicare grows and more healthcare providers across the country announce they’re dropping their Medicare Advantage plans all together.
“It's criminal, that Gloria would be okay, forcing people into a single plan they wouldn't choose if given the opportunity to — to finance a fund that doesn't benefit them,” Pizzitola said. “That’s just horrible.”