By Joe Maniscalco

Parks Dept. retiree Michael Sirotta spent nearly a quarter century building up a free arts program for New York City kids. Famous Alumni of the now defunct program located on Staten Island include recording artist and actor Ingrid Michaelson, who joined the camp when she was nine-years-old.

This week, Sirotta joined fellow municipal retirees on the sweltering streets outside City Hall urging “The most Progressive City Council in history” to back a bill [Intro. 1099] preventing embattled Mayor Eric Adams and the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] from stripping workers of the traditional Medicare health insurance package they were promised decades ago — and throwing them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan run by Aetna.

“First of all, on a national level, I think this is a danger to Medicare,” Sirotta told Work-Bites as the temperature pushed towards 90 degrees on Thursday. “Across the board privatizing Medicare is like when they tried to privatize Social Security. It’s been shown…and the judge has shown…and even the Aetna lawyer in the case said…no, some people will lose some benefits under privatization. That's not fair. That's not what we were promised. That's not what we were told we would get [when we retired]. And I'm glad that the judge came down on our side.”

New York State Supreme Court Justice Lyle E. Frank last week issued a temporary injunction against the City of New York’s scheme to get out of its decades-old promise of covering the costs associated with retiree healthcare by offloading municipal workers into a privatized Medicare Advantage plan run by Aetna. In making his determination, Judge Frank said, in part, “irreparable harm would result.”

“When I got the Medicare I was told you will now have Medicare, and you will now have a MediGap — that’s what your health insurance will be when you retire. I was told that in the information they sent,” Sirotta said.

Cancer survivor and Medicare advocate Peter Morley became permanently disabled in 2007. Since then, he’s lost part of his right kidney, undergone multiple spinal surgeries and developed lupus. He says he takes 25 different medications daily, along with a weekly biologic injection just to keep going.

Nevertheless, Morley was outside City Hall previously on June 22, rallying alongside New York City municipal retirees in support of Intro. 1099 — as well as advocating for the preservation of traditional Medicare against an onslaught of healthcare privatization nationwide. 

“Without access to [traditional Medicare], I could not afford to pay for these medications,” Morley said. “I would lose access to my team of doctors. As a result, my disease would progress, and I would die.”

Ken Carl was an MTA motorman for nearly 40 years. Later this summer, he’ll mark the second year of his retirement. Carl was also on the streets outside City Hall on Thursday, pressing New York City Council members to sign onto Intro. 1099. He also worried about the forces of privatization “chipping away” at municipal worker healthcare packages wherever they can.

“They start with the city — and then work their way up,” Carl told Work-Bites. “We're kind of like in limbo because technically, we’re city. What goes around comes around. If we don't stop them here, you know, it could spread. We’re in a fight. Personally, I think we should have Medicare for All like [Senator] Bernie Sanders says.”

Last month, the MTA and Transport Workers Union Local 100 — the union representing New York City Transit workers — heralded a new three-year pact with “solid annual raises.”

But, as we reported here, “Several active union and retired members expressed concern to Work-Bites that under the terms and conditions of the new contract as distributed, retirees could lose the unfettered access to traditional Medicare (Option I) they say they currently enjoy, as one of three options offered through the existing union contract.”

Assembly Member Ken Zebrowski [D-96th District], however, has a counterpart to Intro. 1099 in the New York State Assembly also aimed at protecting traditional Medicare benefits for municipal retirees. That measure has now been officially been designated Intro. 7866.

New York City municipal retirees fighting both the Adams administration and the MLC against healthcare privatization have gotten strong support from Council Member Chris Marte [D-1st District] and a number of others. But mostly what they’ve also gotten thus far, is a lot of lip service and evasive triangulation from elected officials worried about being “alienated” or losing their seats. 

At the time of this writing, Intro. 1099 has only 14 co-sponsors — and that’s including outgoing Council Member Charles Barron who successfully introduced the bill last month, but recently lost re-election.

Speaker Adrienne Adams [D-28th District] is considered a close ally of the mayor and opposes legislative efforts to safeguard traditional Medicare benefits for municipal retirees.

Work-Bites reached out to the City Council for further clarification on the speaker’s position — but has not received a response.

Marianne Pizzitola, president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees, is urging Council members to “get off the fence” and back Intro. 1099.

“Several of them, including a few from Staten Island, have said, ‘you just get that bill to the floor and we'll get on it,’” Pizzitola said on Thursday. “And then other Council Members will tell us, ‘Well, you know…the unions keep telling us it's illegal, or ‘the unions keep telling us that there's no funding.’ It doesn't need funding — it’s been funded since 1967.”

Pizzitola added, “If it’s not there…where did it go?”

“And I'm gonna say just this until I'm blue in the face — someone needs to put rules in place, and look into why the [Health] Stabilization Fund has been misused the way it has…it was never supposed to be used for raises or filling budget gaps by greeting mayors,” Pizzitola said. 

The EMS retiree is also calling on New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who previously refused to register the city’s Medicare Advantage contract with Aetna, to locate a “corner of the budget” to “make sure people who have these promises stay on traditional Medicare with a Senior Care supplement — forever, like we were promised.”

Work-Bites reached out to the Comptroller’s Office for comment, but has not received a response.

“I can tell you one thing that was promised to us that I could see even in the published plan that OLR [Office of Labor Relations] showed us was the Aetna plan — that we were not supposed to have co-pays,” Sirotta added. “That was part of the guarantee. But according to the Aetna plan: no co-pays for doctor's visits — except specialists. Well…guess who seniors see? Mostly specialists!”