By Joe Maniscalco

Nancy Losinno still remembers her husband Joseph returning home in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 absolutely devastated by all the death and suffering he experienced as a faithful member of the FDNY. New Yorkers back then were constantly being exhorted to “Never Forget.” Nancy Losinno never needed to be told.

Joseph Losinno ultimately died a few years ago, as a result of his Ground Zero exposure — one of the now 329 FDNY veterans who have succumbed to a 9/11-related illness since 2001.

“I took care of him, along with our daughter,” Nancy Losinno told fellow protesters rallying outside City Hall earlier this week against the ongoing campaign to strip municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare benefits and push them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage program. “He required lengthy hospital stays, multiple hospital visits, emergency rooms, tests — all kinds of stuff. He suffered…and his spirit is here with us today.”

As a trained social worker, Nancy Losinno said she understands “Medicare, Medicare billing, and health insurance in general” — and “what [the city is] doing is a huge bait and switch.”

“And you need to fight,” Joseph Losinno’s widow continued. “If you sign on the dotted line and say, ‘Oh, it’s not that bad…I’ll go into this Medicare Advantage Plan’ — you will get hit with prior authorizations, with copayments — they will nickel and dime you to death.”

Nancy Losinno is a plaintiff in the 84-page, 12-count class-action lawsuit municipal retiree advocates filed this week challenging the City of New York’s plan to strip municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare coverage — the same kind of privatized scheme mayoral candidate Eric Adams himself once dismissed as a “bait and switch” on the campaign trail.

The city has set a June 30, deadline for retirees to opt out of the looming Medicare Advantage program — leaving them, many alone and unsupported, with little to no choice but to accept the profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan administered by Aetna — or somehow figure out how to cover their out-of-pocket healthcare costs on their own.

Advocates issuing a new challenge to the city’s privatization plans in court this week, however, are urging municipal retirees not to do this. A preliminary injunction, filed along with the class-action lawsuit is seeking to put the brakes on the mayor’s entire plan — a privatization drive the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] are pushing for just as hard — and one that’s being replicated in cities all across the nation.

New York City’s defiant municipal retirees plan on returning to City Hall en mass at Noon on Thursday, June 8, to press the fight for their traditional Medicare coverage. 

“Every case that we have filed so far, where they told us that either we didn’t have standing or weren’t going to win, or we had no cause — we have won every single time,” New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees President Marianne Pizzitola told the hundreds of protesters assembled outside City Hall on Wednesday, May 31.

Ninety-year-old firebrand Evie Jones Rich put Mayor Eric Adams and the entire City Council on blast, saying that by attempting to strip municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare benefits — or largely remaining silent while it happens — they have “turned their backs” on Losinno and other 9/11 families.

“And in doing so, you turned your backs on all of us,” Rich declared. “And we are not going to accept it.”

Sadly, Pizzitola said, “The only people protecting us, is ourselves.”

“We know the mayor did say when he was candidate Adams…candidate for mayor…that this was a ‘bait and switch.’ And now, all of a sudden, he’s full-throated into this plan and doesn’t even want to talk to us about it,” she said.

Retiree groups, including the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees and the Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations [COMRO], have repeatedly requested a sit down with City Hall in an effort to identify other cost-saving measures that do not involve kicking municipal retirees out of the traditional Medicare program they paid into for years — but they have gotten nowhere.

Work-Bites reached out to the Mayor’s Office for comment on this story, but was denied a response.

“We also know that this is a diminishment of our benefits,” Pizzitola continued. “We also know many of your doctors and hospitals will not be accepting this plan. We also know…we have several seniors that do live in CCRCs — which stands for Continuing Care Residential Communities — they do not accept HMOs or MA plans. So, these people will be left in the lurch without having health insurance. They would end up having to pay the full cost of that, or they would end up losing their end of life care plan.”

Municipal retirees are “angry and organized” and promising to make sure elected officials who fail to actively oppose the Medicare Advantage push soon feel the displeasure of 250,000 municipal retires at the polls.

Santos Crespo, retired head of DC 37 Local 372, and current member of the DC 37 Retirees Association, said he was at this week’s rally to specifically remind Mayor Adams, “The unions do not vote for him — it is us.”

“The unions may endorse — but we are the ones who come out and fill in that bubble,” Crespo said. “Well, guess what? Maybe on the next go round, Mr. Mayor — and there’s not one [mayor] that I know that does not already plan for the next go round — we’re gonna remember that you were not with us — that you reneged on a promise [to cover retiree healthcare] that’s older than fifty years.”

Pizzitola, a former EMS worker and 9/11 first responder who also serves as president of the FDNY EMS Retirees, further added, “For retirees to stick together is absolutely huge because we know what our lives look like after sixty-five — it’s the ones making the decisions that don’t.”

LOST LEGISLATION

Municipal retirees have proposed legislation before the New York City Council aimed at further protecting their traditional Medicare health insurance coverage — but Speaker Adrienne Adams opposes it, and the legislation has, so far, been left to languish.

Rich further urged Speaker Adrienne Adams’ constituents in Queens to challenge her stance on the languishing retiree bill, and also called out City Council Member and former Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer for not doing more to preserve traditional Medicare coverage for city retirees.

“Why are you so silent?” Rich demanded to know. “Stand up, Gale! Stand with me.”

Council Member Brewer later told Work-Bites she is “ecstatic that the attorneys filed the case.”

“I was instrumental in finding some of the plaintiffs and will continue to support the litigation and retirees,” Brewer said in an email.

Other members of “NYC’s most progressive City Council yet” insist they are fully supporting municipal retirees and their fight to hold onto their traditional Medicare coverage.

“I have never wavered from my position and won’t start now,” Civil Service and Labor Committee member Tiffany Cabán told Work-Bites in an email. “Unilaterally forcing a change to retirees’ hard-fought health coverage is unacceptable. I hear from retirees every day who simply cannot bear the cost this change would force on them.”

Council Member Cabán added, “As I have steadfastly maintained from the beginning of this controversy, the city must make immediate allocations to shore up the Municipal Labor Committee’s Stabilization Fund in the short term, so that we can figure out a longterm pathway to controlling healthcare costs, in order to get at the root cause of the current emergency.”

According to Council Member Cabán, “Ultimately, that means Medicare for All federally, or the NY Health Act at the state level, so that our healthcare system will be geared toward providing healthcare, and not funneling profits to the wealthy.”

Work-Bites has reached out to other members of the New York City Council Progressive Caucus and is awaiting their replies.

Council Member Ari Kagan, a member of the Common-Sense Caucus, tells Work-Bites he is “currently engaged in both the development of a resolution and a self-drafting of a bill to address the concerns surrounding healthcare coverage for current municipal retirees.”

According to Kagan, the proposed resolution is progressing through City Council’s legislative system and will be introduced soon, while the self-drafting bill is actively being prepared for introduction in the near future.

“Both the resolution and the bill aim to specifically address the healthcare coverage concerns of current retirees who have dedicated their careers to public service,” Kagan told Work-Bites in an email. “As an elected official, my primary focus at this time is to safeguard the healthcare benefits and Medicare coverage of these retirees. While the resolution's scope is focused on current retirees, it is important to emphasize that the well-being of future retirees is also of utmost importance, and their needs will be duly considered as well.”

Meanwhile, the day is coming soon when the FDNY’s 9/11-related fatalities will surpass those killed on the day of the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City. Exactly how many other municipal retirees who also risked everything for the City of New York on that day, and need the healthcare they were promised, will share the same fate — is unknown.