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By Joe Maniscalco

UFT President Michael Mulgrew’s recent decision to pull out of the campaign to push 250,000 New York City municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan represents a “golden opportunity” for Speaker Adrienne Adams to “reignite” the conversation about retiree healthcare, Council Member Shahana Hanif [D-39th District] told Work-Bites this past weekend.

“There’re a lot of politics involved which I can’t speak to—but with Mulgrew, one of the initial core supporters of Medicare Advantage now pulled out—I think that really presents a golden opportunity to call on our Speaker [Adrienne Adams]…to call on the Labor Committee Chair [Carmen De La Rosa]…to reignite this conversation back to the council,” Council Member Hanif said.

Mulgrew reversed course last month and announced he was pulling out of the privatization push he had been helping to spearhead—blaming Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, in part, for being “unwilling to continue this work in good faith.”

The mayor had predicated much of his support for privatizing city retirees’ MediGap coverage—a scheme he previously denounced as a “bait and switch”—on the notion that New York City’s public sector unions wanted it.

“Our [union] leadership may have wanted this—but the membership didn’t,” newly-elected UFT Retired Teachers Chapter Secretary Gloria Brandman told Work-Bites. “[Mulgrew] realized that—which is why he stepped back and said I’m not gonna push for it anymore.”

On June 28, Harry Nespoli, chair of the Municipal Labor Committee—the umbrella organization ostensibly charged with negotiating on behalf of the city’s public sector unions—signaled that the MLC is following Mulgrew out the door.

“While the MLC as a whole believed the negotiated, custom-designed Medicare Advantage plan held promise for our retirees, its implementation has been repeatedly blocked by the courts,” Nespoli wrote to the mayor. “And, while an appeal from the first adverse decision remains pending before the New York Court of Appeals, the recent decision of the Appellate Division in the second retiree case adds still another legal hurdle to its implementation.”

New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees President Marianne Pizzitola told Work-Bites the MLC’s letter “seemingly withdraws their support for the Medicare Advantage Plan that would strip public service retirees’ access to their doctors and hospitals.”

“Council Member Hanif is correct that this is an opportune moment to reintroduce a retiree health bill that would enshrine retirees’ healthcare benefits into law and ensure that this attack on us never happens again and the benefits we were promised are protected,” Pizzitola said.

Intro. 1099—the legislation former City Council Member Charles Barron introduced last year aimed at protecting municipal retirees from being pushed into a privatized Medicare Advantage plan—has been left to languish in a dark corner of the New York City Council’s basement largely because Speaker Adrienne Adams insists the fight over retiree healthcare must be litigated in court.

Mayor Adams’ administration has suffered a string of court defeats preventing it from imposing a profit-driven Medicare Advantage care on city retirees, and is now hoping the New York State Court of Appeals will finally deliver a ruling to its liking. But even if it doesn’t get that ruling, the administration reportedly has a number of other options it can attempt.

In May, Speaker Adams called for “closure” on the Medicare Advantage issue after a state Appellate Court dealt the mayor’s administration its latest legal defeat when it upheld Supreme Court Justice Lyle Frank’s earlier ruling permanently blocking the privatization plan from happening.   

“The mayoral administration and Municipal Labor Committee's agreement on Medicare Advantage for retirees has been the subject of ongoing conversations in the Council, despite the legislature not being a party to the negotiated arrangement,” a spokesperson for Speaker Adams told Work-Bites this week. “As unresolved disagreements between the relevant parties continue to be prolonged within the courts, the Speaker maintains that the City needs closure that sufficiently addresses the concerns of all sides.”

Council Member Hanif called the privatization of healthcare “immoral.”

“It’s just wrong Council Member Hanif told Work-Bites. “I think it’s really time to look at the actual costs of what is going on with retirees. I’ve not seen this kind of organizing campaign [in my first two years in office]. The people are speaking and it’s my responsibility to listen—and I call on my colleagues to do the same.”

Hanif was in Brooklyn on Saturday in support of members of the Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee [CROC] who were at the Grand Army Plaza green market celebrating Medicare’s 59th Birthday—and calling on U.S. Senator and Brooklyn neighbor Chuck Schumer to step up and do more to protect Medicare from the onslaught of Medicare Advantage plans and privatization.

CROC collected about 150 signatures on a “Happy Birthday, Medicare” card to be presented to the 73-year-old Senate Majority Leader.