NYC Retirees: ‘Who Needs Adrienne Adams As Mayor? Nobody!’
Hard Pass: It didn’t take long for New York City municipal retirees battling the Medicare Advantage push to reject Speaker Adrienne Adams’ mayoral run.
By Joe Maniscalco
New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams launched her mayoral campaign over the weekend hoping to distinguish herself from that other Adams already in office.
But municipal retirees fighting to retain their Traditional Medicare health insurance coverage say she—like Hizzoner Mayor Eric Adams—is a total bust on the issue.
As Speaker, Adrienne Adams [D-28th District] has steadfastly opposed efforts to advance City Council legislation aimed at both codifying the Traditional Medicare with Medigap supplement retirees earned on the job—and finally ending Mayor Adams’ ongoing crusade to push 250,000 retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan.
That’s the same kind of privatized Medicare Advantage scheme Donald Trump and the Project 2025 crowd can’t wait to impose on everyone nationwide. Those plans—with their widely-reported restrictions, pre-authorizations, denials, and narrow networks—have been shown to cost more and provide less care.
But over the last four years, the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees [NYCOPSR] and their supporters have beaten back every effort to push city retirees into a Medicare Advantage plan they do not want, racking up nearly a dozen victorious court cases in the process.
But that hasn’t stopped Mayor Adams—who famously denounced Medicare Advantage on the campaign trail as a “bait and switch”—from continuing to appeal.
During that time, Speaker Adrienne Adams has stood firmly on the sidelines both insisting the Medicare Advantage fight belongs in the courts—except when she called for “closure”—and that her office would “continue to do our part to monitor the situation. ”
Council Member Chris Marte is the sponsor of Intro. 1096—the stalled City Council legislation that, if passed, would protect retiree health coverage from being diminished. In December, Marte jeered the Speaker’s position on the bill as actively endangering the welfare of city retirees.
“If we've learned anything from the overturning of Roe v. Wade,” he told Work-Bites, “it's that we can't leave decisions of basic rights to the courts. Retirees have the right to Traditional Medicare, and a court victory now does not stop a future mayor and future court from overturning that victory.”
Work-Bites wanted to know where Speaker Adams stands on the Medicare Advantage fight now that she’s running for mayor, and what she would do if she won in November.
“Speaker Adams supports protecting retirees having healthcare choice,” campaign spokesperson Lupe Todd-Medina told Work-Bites via email. “The mayor’s office must be responsible for resolving this ongoing conflict between the city, retirees and municipal labor, and Speaker Adams would provide the leadership to reach an agreeable resolution as mayor.”
Work-Bites, like city retirees themselves, had more questions for the Speaker’s campaign, but further requests for clarification and elaboration were declined.
Who Needs You?
“If speaker Adams truly supports continued healthcare choice, she would support Intro. 1096,” suspended DC37 Retirees Association officer Neal Frumkin told Work-Bites this week. “Actions speak louder than words. Speaker Adams has blocked this simple legislation that would guarantee retiree healthcare choice including Traditional Medicare and a Medigap plan—which we have had and is less expensive than active worker health coverage.”
NYCOPSR President Marianne Pizzitola interpreted the statement from the Adams campaign to mean, “I support Retirees protecting themselves.”
“She’s punting and avoiding taking responsibility,” Pizzitola told Work-Bites. “The Mayor’s Office is responsible for resolving collective bargaining with his unions—the City Council has always protected Retirees because we have no union anymore to look out for us.”
District Council 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido and Municipal Labor Committee Chair Harry Nespoli continue to drive the Medicare Advantage push—despite the long string of court defeats and landing on the same page as Donald Trump and Project 2025.
Pizzitola added that if Speaker Adams wants to be a leader, “then she should protect our Medicare benefits from being diminished and costs passed onto us.”
“If she doesn’t take responsibility, she doesn’t deserve to be in leadership—because she’s abdicating her responsibility,” Pizzitola said.
Retired city manager Roberta Gonzalez will never forget being called into her 225 Broadway office to help “clean up” in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. She’s now battling cancer and says Speaker Adams “avoided taking a stand to help us” and “has actively prevented others from acting to protect retirees.”
“I and many, many others have spent thousands of dollars that we don’t really have to support [NYCOPSR] in the court fights,” she said. “All of which we have won, while she and other city officials continue to avoid standing with the retirees. They continue to submit appeals in an attempt to break our spirit and ruin us financially—either by having us continue to shell out our meager pension funds for legal fees or handle additional copays and health insurance costs that they have thrown at us.”
Adams appears to have turned off New York City retiree Roberta Pikser as well.
“Although I am a linguist, I have never learned to speak politi-cese,” she told Work-Bites. “One can never be certain, but I believe the translation into English is: ‘I will do what is politically expedient for me.' This statement does not make me want to support Ms. Adams.”
Stu Eber, president of the Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations, [COMRO] said Speaker Adams can still take a “constructive position to resolve the Medicare Advantage conflict by having the City Council pass Intro. 1096.”
“That would preserve our Medicare benefits and force the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] and the mayor to find other ways to fulfill the $600 million PEG they agreed to in 2018. Hiding behind the lengthy court cases and the misinterpretation of the Taylor Law since 2021 has cost the taxpayers over $2 billion dollars,” he said.
Gonzalez called it “very disheartening” to see a New York City Democrat like Speaker Adrienne Adams “follow the plans laid out in the Republican Project 2025 to dismantle Medicare and promote Medicare Advantage.”
“Medicare Advantage is only an advantage to stockholders who invest in Medicare Advantage programs,” she added. "My tax monies should not be used to support Medicare Advantage programs that pay investors. These programs are not healthcare. They are insurance companies that act the same way all insurance companies act—they try not to pay.”
The Speaker’s position also failed to Retired NYPD Lieutenant Jack LaTorre’s concerns.
“I have to question why she has not supported the New York City Public Service Retirees on the Medicare issue,” LaTorre told Work-Bites. “Actions speak louder than words. It would take my breath away if she came out today and supported retirees’ Intro. 1096 as introduced by Council Member Marte and supported by a handful of council members.”
At the time of this writing, however, only a dozen City Council members—out of a total of 51—have signed onto Intro. 1096.
“Another politician who refuses to take a stand,” Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee organizer Sarah Shapiro told Work-Bites. “She didn't help us municipal retirees the whole time we've been fighting to keep our Traditional Medicare + Medigap plans. As Mayoral candidate she still has nothing substantive to say. Blah! Blah! Blah! Who needs her as mayor? Nobody!”