By Bob Hennelly

New York City Council members wasted little time blasting Mayor Eric Adams as “shameful” for signing a pact with Aetna Insurance and pushing the city’s 250,000 retired civil servants into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage healthcare plan.

“We can’t be slapping in the face all of those retired city workers like the crossing guards and food service workers that did so much for so little,” Council Member Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) said. “It’s disrespectful’ unacceptable and unconscionable.”

Barron said he wanted to co-sponsor legislation proposed by the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees which would enshrine into law New York City retirees’ access to traditional Medicare and premium-free supplemental coverage.

The Adams’ administration’s decision to sign the Medicare Advantage contract comes despite Aetna being the subject of an ongoing Department of Justice investigation over its practices, according to reporting by the New York Times and the company’s own corporate filings, which made that disclosure.

At a Jan. 9 hearing, hundreds of New York City retired civil servants turned out to speak against the $200 million contract which the Adams administration insists will save it some $600 million a year thanks to a federal government subsidy. The heads of the city’s Municipal Labor Committee [MLC], the organization representing public sector unions, have supported the Medicare Advantage push throughout the entire campaign over objections from several of their constituent unions — including the Professional Staff Congress, the Uniformed Firefighters, the Uniformed Fire Officers Association and DC 37’s Local 2507, which represents FDNY EMS, paramedics and fire inspectors.

Council Members pressed the administration’s experts at the Jan. 9 hearing for more details on the looming five-year Aetna deal, but could not get a commitment that they would get to see a draft of the contract. Thanks to close questioning, they did glean that the preliminary Aetna pact called for no premiums for five years — and that the city had committed to pick up whatever increases came along after that. 

In his questions to the panel, City Council Member Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) asked if Aetna, which is owned by CVS, was under investigation.

“I am not sure what that investigation would be about, but we’ll look into it further,” responded Daniel Pollak, first deputy commissioner for the Office of Labor Relations.

Barron told Work-Bites he never heard back from OLR. The Brooklyn Council Member has also flagged Aetna’s admitted role in underwriting insurance for the slave trade as being disqualifying. “I really think all this points to the need for our City Comptroller Brad Lander not to register this contract,” Barron said.

The New York City Comptroller has 30 days from the time a contract is entered to register it, according to that office. Last year, Comptroller Brad Lander, citing “legal and budgetary uncertainties” said he “lacked sufficient information to register the proposed Medicare Advantage Plan contract” with Aetna’s predecessor Anthem.

Under the City Charter, the mayor has the final say on pending city contracts.

"Retirees of this city gave years of service to New Yorkers and were promised the benefits they deserve upon retirement. Taking away these benefits now is wrong,” said Council Member Robert Holden (D-Queens). “We must find a solution to ensure retirees have the coverage they need while keeping our city on a stable economic path. Let's honor our commitments and find a way forward that benefits everyone."

“This is shameful,” Council Member Shahana Hanif (D-Brooklyn) said. “Forcing this change on our city’s retirees will lead to worsening health outcomes at a time when they need high quality care.”

Hanif urged Mayor Adams “to reconsider and instead choose Aetna’s proposed Option C, which would allow retirees to keep their current level of coverage without additional costs.”

Adams has rejected that approach.

Several groups of retirees, including the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees have been protesting the push into Medicare Advantage going back to the de Blasio administration citing a profit-making business model that relies on denying people care through the use of prior authorizations.   

In his statement announcing the signing of the Aetna contract, Mayor Adams insisted that this administration, working closely with the MLC, and had addressed the concerns raised by city retirees.

“This plan improves upon retirees’ current plans, including offering a lower deductible, a cap on out-of-pocket expenses, and new benefits, like transportation, fitness programs, and wellness incentives,” Adams wrote. “We also heard the concerns of retirees and worked to significantly limit the number of procedures subject to prior authorization under this plan. This Medicare Advantage plan is in the best interests of both our city’s retirees and its taxpayers.” 

On March 21, Marianna Pizzitola, a retired FDNY EMT and president of NYCOPSR, wrote City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and the entire City Council urging them to pass legislation “that would explicitly protect retirees’ access to traditional Medicare.”

“Medicare Advantage is nothing like traditional Medicare, on which retirees have relied for over half a century,” Pizzitola wrote. “Whereas virtually all doctors and continued residential care communities accept traditional Medicare (and, by extension, Medigap plans), many do not accept Medicare Advantage plans. If allowed to proceed, the City’s unprecedented action will have catastrophic consequences for hundreds of thousands of elderly and disabled retirees.”  

In her correspondence, Pizzitola invoked the name of Council Member Mary Pinkett — the first Black woman elected to the Council. Pinkett served from 1974 to 2001 and fought for the Administration Code that protected municipal retirees’ healthcare, resisting “the efforts of three prior Mayors to take away health benefits from retirees.”

Pizzitola told Work-Bites that before the Jan. 9 hearing, she approached Council Member Amanda Farias (D-Bronx) to sponsor a NYCOPSR bill to protect city retirees’ existing health benefits. In recent weeks, Pizzitola says she was advised that the City Council’s legal staff would not give the measure a bill number and that it ran afoul of New York State’s Public Employees’ Fair Employment Act (Taylor Law).

Barron believes the Council needs to move ahead and advance Pizzitola’s proposal. “We need to move this bill forward and whatever legal ramifications there are we will deal with down the road,” he said during a phone interview.

Requests for comment from Farias’s office and Speaker Adams did not get a response.  

Earlier this month, New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams [D-21st District] confirmed she had read the letter from the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees, but that the City Council would not act on it.

“We’ve read the letter, but we are leaving this conversation to the parties to collectively bargain at this time,” Adams said. “We are not considering anything at the moment, but we are still listening to the various parties involved.”

“The Taylor Law is very clear that public unions can only negotiate on behalf of active members, which leaves 250,000 retirees out of the process entirely,” countered Pizzitola. “Historically, it has been the City Council which has protected retirees and acted as the guarantors of the city’s solemn commitment it has made for generations to its workforce.” 

In October, the New York Times published the headline “The Cash Monster Was Insatiable: How Health Insurers Exploited Medicare for Billions-By next year half of Medicare beneficiaries will have a private Medicare Advantage plan. Most large insurers have been accused of fraud.”

The Times continued, “Eight of the 10 biggest Medicare Advantage insurers — representing more than two-thirds of the market — have submitted inflated bills, according to the federal audits. And four of the five largest players — UnitedHealth, Humana, Elevance and Kaiser — have faced federal lawsuits alleging that efforts to over diagnose their customers crossed the line into fraud.”

“The fifth company, CVS Health, which owns Aetna, told investors its practices were being investigated by the Department of Justice,” the Times reported.

The MLC’s controversial embrace of Medicare Advantage is the outgrowth of deals it cut with the de Blasio administration to find billions of dollars in healthcare costs savings as unions settled well over 100 labor contracts that Mayor Bloomberg had left unsettled for years.

And as Work-Bites has already reported, the campaign to push NYC retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan is also part of a much larger nationwide campaign to strip retirees of traditional Medicare benefits and usher in the further privatization of U.S. healthcare.

Last year, the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees successfully challenged the city’s implementation of its Medicare Advantage strategy bringing it to a standstill at the start of the Adams’ administration. Tens of thousands of city retirees opted out. One key issue was a requirement that city retirees who opted out of the new offering would have to pay a $191 monthly premium for their old plan. Subsequently, the two health insurance companies fronting the controversial plan withdrew.

That court decision for the retirees was upheld on appeal. NYCOPSR  is expected to go back to court to challenge the Aetna contract.