By Bob Hennelly

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour’s Health Care Fridays with Julianna Forlano & Marianne Pizzitola. If it’s Friday on WBAI Pacifica Radio—we are talking  healthcare because it’s the number one labor issue in America.

On this week’s show, we’re looking at the politics behind Mayor Eric Adams’ ongoing campaign to push New York City retired civil servants into a predatory Aetna Medicare Advantage plan. We’re also talking about how 9/11 WTC First Responders & Survivors are being betrayed by Private Contractor Sedgwick

Julianna Forlano joins Marianne Pizzaiola, retired FDNY EMT and president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees to talk about the mayoral campaign politics behind the debate over the future of New York City civil service retiree healthcare.

Marianne has been leading the fight against plans to force retirees off of their reliable Medicare coverage and onto a for-profit  Aetna Medicare Advantage plan that’s neither Medicare nor an advantage. This week, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who opposed Medicare Advantage, announced his candidacy for mayor. The current mayor, meanwhile, went to the Bronx and chatted up retired municipal civil servants. It did not go well for him.

In our second half of the show, we look into troubling reports about the failures of  Sedgwick, a private benefit contractor administering the national 9/11 World Trade Center Health Program. We hear from retired FDNY Capt. James Rallis about his disturbing first-hand experience of trying to access the 9/11 WTC Health Program via Sedgwick.

Three days after the 9/11 attack, former New Jersey Governor Christie Todd Whitman, then head of the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] told reporters that “the good news continues to be that air samples we have taken have all been at levels that cause us no concern.”

Two years after 9/11, a review by the EPA Inspector General found the EPA “did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement,” as “air monitoring data was lacking for several pollutants of concern.”

The OIG learned that it was President George W. Bush’s White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) that heavily edited the EPA press releases “to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones.”

More people have now died from their exposure to World Trade Center dust that the close to 3,000 people killed the day of the actual attack.

Currently, close to 90,000 first responders are enrolled in the WTC Health Program. Over 45,000 civilian “survivors” are enrolled—a small fraction of the people that were present in the hot zone. The Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour is committed to telling their stories.  

Listen to the entire show below:

WBAI Pacifica Radio Network labor reporting is supported by sustaining contributions from union representing over two million union members including AFGE, 1199SEIU, 32BJ SEIU. TWU of America, CWA-NJ, USW Nurses Local 4-200, HPAE, NY/NJ METRO POSTAL APWU AFL-CIO, DC 37 Local 3621 FDNY EMS Officers, Teamsters Local 210, and the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees.