By Joe Maniscalco

Retired NYPD Lieutenant Jack LaTorre, 68, rode his bike over from Bay Ridge to Sunset Park Monday afternoon, hoping to ask New York City Mayor Eric Adams why he insists on trying to strip municipal retirees like him of their traditional Medicare benefits and push them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan.

Hizzoner was at Sunset Park High School on 35th Street for a public sector jobs fair aimed at helping to fill, as AFSCME National President Lee Sanders pointed out, “970,000 civil service vacancies across the United States.” Hundreds of young people stood in line for their chance at making a decent living. 

LaTorre, who was diagnosed with a 9/11-related cancer in 2013, never got the chance to engage the mayor, who instead decided to bypass him and the small group of municipal retirees who were waiting for him as he existed the building.

“I’m one of the fortunate ones — I’m here today talking to you,” LaTorre told Work-Bites. He carried a sign saying, “Protect Medicare, NYC Unions Protect Retired Labor.” It had a skeleton on it.

“I’m in good shape,” LaTorre continued. “I had a bone marrow transplant. Thank goodness for the World Trade Center Health Program. I don’t know if [the mayor] is afraid of us, but he has every right to be ashamed and embarrassed by what’s going on. It’s really a betrayal. And it’s not just a New York City issue — it’s more of an American issue.”

New York State Supreme Court Justice Lyle Frank earlier this month issued a permanent injunction against the City of New York blocking City Hall from imposing its Aetna Medicare Advantage contract on retirees. The Adams administration is vowing to fight the decision.

As a mayoral candidate, Eric Adams criticized pushing retired civil servants into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan when former Mayor Bill de Blasio was behind the scheme.

“Remember when you were running for mayor you said it sounds like a ‘bait and switch’ — what happened?” LaTorre wondered on the sidewalk as the job hunters slowly flowed into the school. 

Work-Bites wondered the same thing and went inside the building to ask Mayor Adams what changed his mind about privatizing municipal healthcare. Retirees were barred from entering — even to use the bathroom. Security said it was because “They’re protesting.”

“First of all, it wasn't that I didn't like it,” the mayor told Work-Bites. “I said, we need to look at it. I was very clear on that.”

What the Adams said, as Michael Gartland from the Daily News reported in 2021, is “I know what people are going through, and so we’re going to take a close examination of this because it’s going to traumatize our retirees. Some of the stories I’m hearing about increases in payments, you’re on a fixed income — this is devastating.”

Be that as it may, Mayor Adams continued on Monday, “I sat down with UFT. I sat down with the Teamsters. I sat down with DC 37. I sat down with everyone who represents…these are the members that we're talking about…those who are elected to represent populations looked at it. And we're still making sure whatever plan is finalized is going to make sure that people have the benefits that they deserve.”

Back out on the street, Neal Frumkin, vice-president of Inter-Union Relations for the DC37 Retirees Association told Work-Bites, “It’s sort of amazing that an ex-cop would be standing in favor of something that is illegal — they basically broke the law by doing this.”

Frumkin noted Adams did not speak to the District Council 37 Retirees Association before backing the privatization of municipal health care once he became mayor. 

“We represent over 50,000 retired city workers who are almost all affected by this change,” Frumkin said. “We have yet to speak to the mayor. Certainly, this plan is going nowhere. The courts have stopped it dead in its tracks. If they want the stakeholders to come together to discuss what could be done, [the mayor] really needs to get all of the prominent players together. They haven’t done that yet.”

Fellow DC37 retiree and NYC Coalition of Labor Union Women President Michelle Keller came out to engage the mayor on her birthday. She puzzled over why organized labor is even advocating privatizing healthcare in the first place. 

“Why are we working with folks whose values don’t align with ours,” Keller said. “We understand they are part of medical fraud — that is a very big concern for us at this time. We worry about our most vulnerable populations — of which [the mayor’s] mom once belonged. He has a green DC37 card in his pocket. If we are truly involved in the investment of our folks, we need to get all the folks in one room here.”

Retired New York City civil servant Brian Wonsever, 67, called the Mayor of New York City "a chicken” and said he should come out and debate him on the sidewalk. Or, if not him, New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees President Marianne Pizzitola.

“All of these people who are standing on line here looking for jobs — I want them to be able to have their Medicare benefits when they retire,” Wonsever said. “I don’t want them to have to go through, as I did, managed care when you have a chronic condition. Mine lasted for eight years. No one should Have to go through that. These people standing on this line don’t know when something is going to happen to them like happened to me.”

Pizzitola responded to the Adam’s comments this week in Brooklyn by saying the mayor “gets it wrong once again.”

“And if he spoke with me,” Pizzitola said, “he would have learned unions do not represent retirees. But that didn’t stop them from protecting us until now. So, while I am glad he speaks to DC37, UFT and the Teamsters, these are the very unions who chose to sell off retired labor’s earned and paid for health benefits — access to the Federal Public Health Benefit of Medicare — to use that value in their collective bargaining — which retirees are not a part of.”

Historically, Pizzitola further emphasized, Medicare is a benefit both organized labor and Martin Luther King, Jr. supported — so that “we could all have equal access to care.”

“Privatizing Medicare harms the retiree and further depletes the Federal Medicare Trust which affects all Americans,” the former EMT said. “The Mayor said he looked at the Aetna plan. Did he see that in the Aetna Medicare Advantage plan many of our retirees would lose access to hospitals and doctors? That their current doctors can no longer prescribe treatment or procedures without Aetna authorizing first — it causes delays and denials of care? Or that Continuing Care Residential Communities, where some seniors live, do not accept an Advantage plan?”

Pizzitola continued, “Did he learn seniors are forced to use their drug plan, which was identified to cost a retiree more? Did he learn the plan is not cheaper in that every service has a co-pay, and we don’t need a ‘cap on out-of-pocket expenses’ because we have none now — and this is a pure cost transfer to low-income retirees?"  

Stu Eber, president of the Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations told Work-Bites, “Candidate Adams learned about the ‘bait and switch’ from several retiree organizations, particularly COMRO, that publicly called out the [Bill] de Blasio administration’s RFP privatizing and diminishing our Medicare benefits.”

“Mayor Adams refused to meet with these elected representatives of the retirees to respond to OMB’s autocratic and inaccurate response to our facts and counterproposals for health care savings that protect retirees, employees, and taxpayers,” Eber continued. “From retired Deputy Mayors to impoverished DC37 retirees, we are united in opposing privatizing Medicare and Social Security. We remain available to meeting with our Mayor to end this judicial and legislative fight and unite behind progressive health care programs that protect everyone’s health and financial interests.”

Wonsever, a former statistical programmer with background in information technology, can’t figure out why Mayor Adams wants to use a privatized Medicare Advantage program when there’s “no reason this city can’t self-insure on a Medigap plan” and “cut out the middle man.”

“I think we need to look at what’s going on behind the scenes. I think we need to pull that curtain back,” he said. “I think there is a connection between campaign funding and givebacks to corporations and politicians. It’s no secret that the unions are on board with this because they’re getting a bailout.”

Pizzitola said if the the mayor truly read the Aetna Medicare Advantage plan and still stands by his statements — “he must be living in another universe.”

She added, “In the words of Mahatma Gandhi: ‘The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.’ The mayor once said, ‘You can’t balance the books on the backs of those who have been providing so much for the City.’ Moving to Medicare Advantage does that — because the mayor was giving that funding to the misused fund to fill a PEG caused by a union negotiation retirees were not part of.”

LaTorre still remembers a woman coming up and grabbing his arm in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and saying, ‘Thank you! Thank you!’ It made him feel good to be helping people. It’s one of the reasons he became a cop. Colleagues warned him, however, that people would soon forget.

“Sadly, they were right,” LaTorre told Work-Bites before folding up his sign and riding back home to Bay Ridge. “I dunno, the city bureaucracy…they sort of feel…well, you worked for us — now go stand over there, go away.”