Democracy Dies in the Darkness - But Retirees Fighting Medicare Advantage Refuse to Follow it Down

NYC retirees fighting the privatization of municipal health care picket outside MS 88 in Brooklyn on Oct. 12. Photo by Joe Maniscalco

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ response last Thursday night in Brooklyn to municipal retirees challenging his administration’s plan to herd them into a privatized Medicare Advantage health insurance plan clocks in at roughly two-and-a-half-minutes.

But listen close, in that relatively short period of time, Hizzoner manages to declare “what we are doing” and what “we’re going to do” no less than four times when referring to his administration’s ongoing campaign to privatize municipal retiree health care.

That repeated declaration belies growing retiree opposition to the Medicare Advantage push, repeated court rulings blocking the Medicare Advantage push, and pending legislation at the local, state and federal levels of government all barring the Medicare Advantage push.

“Our teachers, firefighters, police officers, sanitation workers, and other municipal workers did not deserve this bait and switch,” U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis said when introducing bipartisan legislation with U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres last month.

Eric Adams used to call the Medicare Advantage push a “bait and switch,” too. But that’s before he was mayor and his predecessor Bill de Blasio had his fingerprints all over the scheme and there were political points to score.

Now, the mayor talks emphatically about “what we are doing” to drive municipal retirees into Medicare Advantage.

In actuality, what the mayor has done is explode any pretense his administration and those under its thumb may have ever had that they were seriously considering anything anybody opposed to privatizing municipal health care had to say. 

Yeah, there was a perfunctory city council “hearing” on aspects of the plan back in January. But the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees, Cross-union Retirees Organizing Committee [CROC], Council on Municipal Retiree Organizations [COMRO], and other retiree groups have been vainly spinning their wheels requesting meetings with the administration to talk about their longstanding objections to privatization. As the mayor himself said last week — he’s heard it “over and over” again.

Well, sorry to bother you.

Retirees have also continually called for a special blue ribbon panel with all the   stakeholders involved to explore other ways of saving the City of New York money that do not involve stripping present and future municipal retirees of the health care benefits they were promised.

They still want to talk.

“The Mayor continues to allow OMB [Office of Management and Budget] to drag the retirees, taxpayers, and unions through years of litigation rather than sitting down with all parties to develop plans for reducing health care costs and City Tax Levy dollars while preserving Medicare,” COMRO President Stu Eber told Work-Bites this week. “There are several proposals presented to the Mayor’s Office and the City Council that produce real cost savings without diminishing benefits for retirees or employees.”

Instead of sitting down, the mayor has decided to lean hard on the notion that stripping municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare coverage and forcing them in a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan run by insurance industry giant Aetna is just fine and dandy because the heads of the city’s most powerful public sector unions think it’s great and want it to happen.

This is an incredibly specious argument to make because to believe it, you’d also have to believe that the guy running the City of New York doesn’t understand that — under the Taylor law — public sector unions cannot and do not bargain on behalf of union members once they retiree.

People tell Work-Bites the mayor is “arrogant” and “ignorant" on this issue. Well, Work-Bites doesn’t buy the latter.

“People who are elected to represent their [union] membership, support what we're going to do,” the mayor also told retirees and a gymnasium full of neighborhood voters last week.

It was a stunningly transparent attempt to apply a democratic sheen to what is nothing more than a naked authoritarian campaign to privatize real Medicare benefits.

To believe there is anything remotely democratic about the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC]’s endorsement of the Medicare Advantage push — or the MLC as an institution representing public sector unions — is to not understand, or simply not care, that the organization, in fact, does not function democratically.

Members of the organization are so fed up with the weighted votes and dictatorial nature of the top three guys running the show over there that they don’t put much energy into attending meetings anymore, and are even contemplating pulling out of the group all together.   

Then, of course, there is City Council Member Carmen De La Rosa, head of the Committee on Civil Service and Labor and her astonishing admission that the fix is, indeed, in — and she’s not holding a hearing on Intro. 1099, the bill safeguarding retiree Medicare benefits, because NYC Council Speaker and close mayoral ally Adrienne Adams doesn’t want one.

Again, sorry to bother you all.

City Council Member Charles Barron, lead sponsor of Intro. 1099 is actively pursuing a couple of different strategies that could free up his bill and give it the democratic hearing it deserves — Work-Bites will have more on those efforts shortly.

During that same forum last Thursday night in Brooklyn, the mayor also dismissed out of hand the idea that to meet its obligations, the City of New York ought to tax the ultra-rich more.

Heaven forbid! “They are fleeing” already the mayor warned. Further challenging the Hizzoner on this point ultimately got one person ejected from the MS 88 gymnasium.

Taxing billionaires is just crazy, dangerous talk I guess — and an example of what the current mayor likes to call “idealism colliding with reality.”

But hold on, stripping elderly municipal retirees of the Medicare and Medigap coverage they were promised at the start of their city careers and pushing them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage program that forces them to jump through hoops they presently do not have to jump through to get the care they need — that’s supposed to be sober reality? And that’s all the while destroying one of the major reasons why anyone every considers working for the City of New York?

Uh, huh. Okay, got it.

According to the Center for Medicare Advocacy, the one in five people nationwide now in a Medicare Advantage plan are there because it is required by their former employers.

David A. Lipschutz, associate director/senior policy attorney at the Center for Medicare Advocacy, says the drive to push even more people into Medicare Advantage is simply an attempt by employers both public and private to “shift a lot of their costs onto the federal government.”

Never mind that, for a number of reasons, Lipschutz says, Medicare Advantage Plans plans wind up costing us all more while instituting “signifcant barriers to care and limited provider networks.”

The powers that be have already degreed Medicare Advantage will happen — the only question now, is how successful opponents fighting for their lives will be at stopping them.