Beware of the Mad Dash to Medicare Advantage

Many Will Be Harmed: Some of the many Medicare Advantage opponents rallying outside City Hall last month. Photo by Joe Maniscalco

By Joe Maniscalco

Commentary

So, some of the most powerful people in town are warning the rest of us that the most pressing — the most urgent — the most vital issue — facing the City of New York right now is the need to immediately privatize healthcare for municipal retirees — or else. I dunno about you, but this kind of thing reminds me of that time working people were told we had to bail out the big banks.

Remember, it wasn’t that long ago when then U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson put up a scary countdown clock and told everyone in the country we had to cough up $700 billion to bail out the financial sector — right away — no time for talk — no deliberation — or all was lost.

Paulson got his money.

A few years later writing for Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi called TARP — the Troubled Asset Relief Program — a “lush nightmare of unintended consequences” and “one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people.”

And here we go again, New York City style.

This week, the Eric Adams administration — far removed from the campaign trail where the former Brooklyn borough president called privatizing retiree healthcare and the Medicare Advantage Plan [MAP] a classic “bait and switch” — suddenly told everyone “We must move forward with the MAP plan in any way that we can, as quickly as we can.”

Whoa! With that manic-toned missive to Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] Chair Harry Nespoli, Labor Commissioner Renee Campion might have even outdone the former U.S. Treasury Secretary himself. But the playbook Campion is using comes right out of the same one Hank used back in 2008. It’s old. Worn out. Dogeared. Trodding it out now and trying to use it on New Yorkers in 2022 ought to be embarrassing. The only thing that would be more embarrassing is falling for it.

Campion says New York City is losing a whopping $50 million a month waiting to implement MAP. Hold it…if the situation is so dire, why hasn’t anyone in a position of power to actually make things happen seriously tried other ways of saving money — like instituting a stock transfer tax or switching to universal single payer healthcare?

Why isn’t the Labor commissioner and the rest of the Adams administration talking about instituting a stock transfer tax by the end of the week — the same way these very well compensated public servants are threatening the “immediate implementation of a Medicare Advantage plan with the elimination of all other plans” by what…November 4?

Why isn't fighting for universal single payer healthcare getting the same kind of consideration as squeezing more money out extremely vulnerable New Yorkers in their twilight years?

It’s gotta be close to 20 years ago now, but I remember standing on Emmons Avenue in Brooklyn asking late New York City Council Member Lew Fidler about why he wasn’t advocating for a stock transfer tax all the way back then. I remember Fidler — who I considered a pretty stand up guy for one of the “electeds” — looked at me and said something along the lines of, “Joe, if we did that businesses would all leave the city and the Stock Exchange would be a ghost town.”

Is anybody thinking about how diminishing healthcare benefits now and saddling municipal workers with more costs could be catastrophic to this city?

Just last week, a very upset eligibility specialist for the Department of Social Services and DC 37 member named Jodi McMillan told me this: “Most of us who work for the City of New York came to the City of New York for its benefits — and if those benefits are taken away, what’s the reason for us being here? There’s no reason for us being here. You don’t have nothing to offer us.”

The many critics opposing the “MAP attack” on New York City workers insist the real reason UFT President Michael Mulgrew — one of the key proponents of privatization — is pushing the Medicare Advantage Plan is because $1 billion was borrowed from the city’s health stabilization fund back in 2014 to pay for raises — and switching to MAP would be a great way to cover the gap.

This week, the longtime UFT leader — who, by the way could face a no confidence vote if critics can swing it — acknowledged the perniciousness of for-profit private healthcare companies, but suggested bringing MAP to New York City would be a good thing.

Speaking to Work-Bites.com’s Bob Hennelly on WBAI this week, Mulgrew said, “This is a constant battle and that’s one of the things I’m really trying to do here in New York City with all of my colleagues at the MLC…and we’re pushing at our national unions…we at least have an agreement here with the city administration that we’re gonna try to do it differently — we’re not gonna fight with each other over the costs — we’re gonna try to strategize to fight against the industry.”

At the same time, Mulgrew also had to admit, “Unless we get some change on the national level, the federal level, sooner or later, we’re gonna lose this battle.”

There are lots of alternatives to privatizing retiree healthcare. Don’t like the ones I mentioned above? Last month, the New York City Managerial Employees Association told City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams the group strongly opposes the administration’s “planned reductions in health coverage through the privatization of Medicare for retirees as the City seeks to weaken the protections guaranteed for all City workers in the Administrative Code.”

“The City has alternatives for managing rising health care costs instead of amending the Administrative Code,” the group said. “The Administration could use its purchasing power to challenge hospitals for exorbitant charges, address the skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs, and audit current insurance providers. The burden should not fall on current workers, retirees, and their dependents.”

Whether or not you think MAP is a good idea, the point here is we all need to be wary whenever we’re told we need to make monumental, long-lasting decisions, but don’t have the time to give it any thought.

If the mad dash to change the city’s administrative code and usher in MAP isn’t setting off your bullshit meter — you need to have that thing checked. Quick.