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By Joe Maniscalco

All eyes in NYC’s Medicare Advantage fight should be on Mayor Eric Adams today, after UFT President Michael Mulgrew’s announcement over the weekend that he’s reversing course and no longer supporting the plan to push 250,000 municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance program.

Mayor Adams has long predicated his support for the privatization plan he once jeered as a “bait and switch” on the idea that the Municipal Labor Committee—the umbrella group ostensibly representing the city’s public sector unions—wanted it.

Well, now one of the most powerful heads in the triumvirate still running the MLC says he’s out.

In his June 23 letter to MLC Chair Harry Nespoli announcing his decision, Mulgrew complained that the Adams administration has become “unwilling to continue this work in good faith” and “we no longer feel the it is in the interest of our members to be a part of that process.”

The UFT president also said his union is withdrawing its support of current healthcare negotiations revolving around active workers and pre-Medicare retirees.

Mulgrew’s announcement follows closely on the heels of the Retiree Advocate/UFT’s recent electoral win, ousting his Unity Caucus allies at the helm of the roughly 70,000-member UFT Retired Teachers Chapter.

Retiree Advocate/UFT’s winning slate consists of members from CROC—Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee—one of the leading groups, along with the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees, that has successfully beaten back the Medicare Advantage push in NYC over the last three years.

Mulgrew has since publicly cited Retiree Advocate/UFT’s crushing victory and the Adams administration’s ongoing losses in court when referencing his decision to drop the Medicare Advantage push.

“Without a doubt, the RA election victory was the final straw that pushed Mulgrew into taking this position,” UFT Retired Teachers Chapter Secretary-elect Gloria Brandman told Work-Bites. “We are being watched all over the country and hopefully, this victory will inspire retiree groups to not sit back and accept lesser healthcare.”

UFT Retired Teachers Chapter Leader-elect Bennett Fischer said Mulgrew should have also acknowledged that he is changing his position because “elections have consequences.”

“He could have acknowledged that he is taking these steps because Retiree Advocate wrested control of the 70,000+ Retired Teachers Chapter from his Unity caucus, and because he sees that his control of the UFT is slipping away,” Fischer said in a statement.

Fischer also said the delays that Mulgrew cites as his reason for withdrawing his support for Medicare Advantage and the in-service health benefit negotiations, “are not due to any dawdling by the city, nor to any disagreements he has with the city, as he claims in his letter to the MLC. Until now, Michael Mulgrew and Mayor Adams have been on the same page.”

New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees President Marianne Pizzitola released a statement saying in large part that “enough is enough.”

“It is time for the City to come to its senses and end its senseless, illegal war on retirees,” she said. “If retirees are forced off of traditional Medicare and into the City’s new Medicare Advantage plan, thousands will be denied access to the doctors they depend on and the medical care they desperately need. And, as the director of the NYC Independent Budget Office testified, City taxpayers will not save a dime.”

Work-Bites has made repeated attempts to reach the administration for comment and is still awaiting a response to questions.

DC 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido, meanwhile, said his union—the other outsized powerhouse inside the MLC—said that his organization is “assessing the impact of the UFT’s withdrawal from the process and determine next steps with our partners in the MLC.”

“The very stark fact remains that healthcare for City workers and retirees needs to be funded, and absent a viable solution such as the one underway, those premium-free benefits are on the line,” Garrido said in a statement.

COMRO—the Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations—is another group that’s been on the frontlines of the Medicare Advantage fight.

“For three years, we have been urging the MLC and the city to bring retirees to the table to discuss constructive ways to save on health care for in-service and retired employees,” COMRO President Stu Eber told Work-Bites. “We hope that going forward the rank and file retirees in each of the 100+ locals will have serious input into the MLC's negotiations—fully understanding that they can't bargain away our Medigap coverage and replace it with Medicare Advantage.”

Eber also said he hopes the MLC has “learned a lesson about not trusting a budget office that ignores the health of its current and former employees in the name of PEGs that are doomed to fail, leaving the rest of us holding the bag—including taxpayers.”

IMPLICATIONS FOR OTHERS IN THE MEDICARE ADVANTAGE FIGHT?

The union representing New York City Transit bus and subway supervisors helped drive another nail in Medicare Advantage’s coffin earlier this month when TWU Local 106 members, under the leadership of President Phil Valenti, amended their  constitution preventing real Medicare coverage from being bargained away.

Paradoxically, retired Transit workers from TWU Local 100, continue to push back on President Richard Davis’ drive to impose Medicare Advantage on his members. And like the New York City Organization of Public Service Workers—they’re in court to stop it.

TWU Local 100 retiree Anita Clinton, one of the many municipal retirees who traveled to Albany back in April to advocate for pending statewide legislation also aimed at safeguarding real Medicare from further privatization, called Mulgrew’s reversal “vindication that retirees do not want Medicare Advantage plans.”

“This is great news for retirees and especially for those who have suffered a myriad of problems due to MAP,” Clinton told Work-Bites. “It is also a message to other union officials who are trying to force Medicare Advantage plans on retirees that it is a losing battle. I’m hopeful our lawsuit, in conjunction with the Local 106 amendment, as well as Mulgrew’s withdrawal—holds meaning for President Davis of Local 100—and that he reconsiders his position.”

Retirees pressing the fight against privatization and Medicare Advantage still face powerful opposition, indeed. Statewide legislation aimed at blocking municipal employers from herding retirees into Medicare Advantage plans failed to make it out of the committee during the latest legislative session in Albany largely because the New York State AFL-CIO under President Mario Cilento lobbied against it.

And officers from the DC37 Retiree Association are still fighting their suspension after AFSCME—the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees—took over the chapter back in February and put it into receivership, after members insisted on supporting the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees in the fight against Medicare Advantage.

Neal Frumkin, one of those suspended DC37 officers, said Retiree Advocate/UFT’s victor has, nevertheless, “rocked” New York City’s municipal sector unions.

“Retirees showed that they will NOT be passive as their benefits are cut,” he told Work-Bites. “How far will AFSCME go in maintaining their undemocratic control of the DC37 Retirees’ Association? We can’t say. However, suspended former leaders and others will prepare to run for office once the imposed administratorship ends. We will lead in the interest of retirees and fight against any attempts to cut benefits. From the beginning of this fight we said that the MLC/City deal hurt low income DC37 retirees (disproportionately Black, Latin and women) the most.”

Regardless of Mulgrew’s decision to reverse course on Medicare Advantage, some suspect Mayor Adams will somehow continue plodding ahead with the scheme. He inked a five-year contract Medicare Advantage contract with scandal-plagued Aetna last year.

“In my opinion, [Mayor] Adams has no shame and will not back down as he sees this as a personal affront,” retired city worker Roberta Gonzalez told Work-Bites. “He seems to be vindictive and can’t take criticism or defeat—à la [Donald] Trump. He doesn’t ever admit to being wrong. I don’t see him backing down from his assault on retirees.”

Brandman also remains wary the mayor might try to “find some other way to save money off the backs of retirees’ healthcare.”

“And Michael Mulgrew came out with a powerful-sounding announcement—but did not say anything against Medicare Advantage programs,” she added.

According to Fischer, none of this would have happened had Mulgrew involved UFT retirees in the union’s decision-making process.

“UFT retirees need to be intimately involved in all UFT policy decisions that directly affect them,” Fischer said. “This is the platform that Retiree Advocate just won an election on. We call on UFT President Michael Mulgrew to support legislation in the New York City Council, and in Albany, to protect our Medicare & Supplemental health benefits on both the City and State levels."