Medicare Advantage Foes Back Independent for Next NYC Mayor…And Retirees Vote!
New York City Organizaiton of Public Service Retirees President Marianne Pizzitola [c] with fellow retirees and supporters rally outside City Hall in September. Photo/Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
The New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees [NYCOPSR] is set to officially endorse attorney and independent candidate for mayor Jim Walden at Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn on Monday, Nov. 25.
Organization president and retired first-responder Marianne Pizzitola made the announcement during a segment posted on the NYCOPSR YouTube channel on Thursday.
“I want to see a sea of retirees,” Pizzitola says on the video. “Elected officials need to know they have to worry about you—not a union leader with active workers not in their district, only working in their district—you live in their district. They need to worry about you.”
NYCOPSR members had just returned from another trek up to Albany where Mayor Eric Adams’ administration is still trying to convince the New York State Court of Appeals to overturn the string of consecutive losses it’s suffered in the lower courts and allow the city to push municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan they do not want.
“This administration is failing retired municipal workers and not protecting the elderly, disabled, 9/11 responders and widows and widowers who suffered the loss of a spouse in the line of duty,” Pizzitola recently told Work-Bites. “Retirees should not have had to fight this battle using their pension to fund litigation to protect their Medicare rights for the last almost four years.”
She discussed the ongoing fight to preserve traditional Medicare on Monday’s episode of “We Decide: America at the Crossroads with Jenna Flanagan” on WBAI where she warned any candidate hoping to win election in New York, “If you’re not gonna protect our healthcare, we’re gonna make sure someone gets elected that does.”
Last month, Pizzitola told Politico that her organization knows Walden would “protect our members by protecting their health care, and we would support him for that reason alone.”
The crowded field of candidates hoping to knock off Adams next fall haven’t been falling over themselves in a rush to defend retirees fighting back against the mayor’s privatization scheme.
“Left twisting in the wind” more accurately describes the situation.
“Medicare is a Democratic Party platform and Medicare advantage is the default plan in project 2025 that Mayor Adams and Speaker Adams seem to accept,” Pizzitola told Work-Bites this week. “Elected officials should be protecting Retirees because we are no longer in unions and were made a promise as the Courts affirmed.”
The lack of support from so-called progressives and democratic socialists in the New York City Council where new legislation protecting the health insurance plan municipal retirees were promised has just a half dozen cosponsors, tells you everything you need to know about the level of “political courage” in this town.
“Candidates must have the fortitude to stand by what they believe in and commit to it, otherwise they too will lose their base like the Democratic Party just did for the same exact reason-abandoning the working class,” Pizzitola added.
Work-Bites wanted to know where the aforementioned mayoral candidates stand in the Medicare Advantage fight and what they would do if elected to the big chair. We’ve been actively trying for weeks, in fact.
So far, only Assembly Member Zorhan Mamdani [D-36th District] has agreed to speak to us on the record.
“I am firmly opposed to privatization and Mayor Adams’ reckless attempts to strip municipal retirees from the traditional Medicare benefits they were promised and earned,” Mamdani told Work-Bites. “Forcing retirees onto a profit-seeking Medicare Advantage plan is irresponsible and wrong.”
The Bronx High School of Science graduate further said that if elected mayor he would simply “stop using the city's law department to fight these rulings from state courts and instead protect the current traditional Medicare benefits.”
As for his views on Intro. 1096—pending legislation introduced in the City Council by Chris Marte [D-1st District] to safeguard municipal retirees’ existing health insurance benefits—Mamdani said he supports the “spirit of the legislation.”
“The spirit of the legislation’s one that it’s only required if the mayor continues to oppose these rulings,” Mamdani said. “So, I support the spirit of it right now, and as the next mayor it would not even be required given what my polices would be on the issue.”
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander sent Work-Bites a statement referring to himself as a “leader in the effort to protect retirees’ hard-earned health care.”
“I remain seriously concerned about Medicare Advantage because quality healthcare coverage for all seniors—and all New Yorkers—is a basic human right,” Lander said in an email. “Nationally, the broader Medicare Advantage trends are worrisome. Investigations identified extensive allegations of fraud, abuse, overbilling, as well as denials of medically necessary care at 9 of the top 10 Medicare Advantage plans. As health care activist and my dear friend Ady Barkan wrote: ‘Once corporations privatize every inch of the public provision of health care, we may never get Medicare back.’”
Lander declined to register the five-year Medicare Advantage contract Mayor Adams signed with Aetna last year.
“Last year, my office carefully reviewed the City’s contract with Aetna and returned the contract to the Office of Labor Relations without registering it because the pending litigation called into question the legality of its procurement,” Lander further told Work-Bites. “As a matter of public policy, beyond the scope of our office’s specific Charter responsibility for contract registration, I was and remain seriously concerned about the privatization of Medicare plans, overbilling by insurance companies, and barriers to care under Medicare Advantage. It is vital that all seniors—and all New Yorkers—get quality health coverage as a basic human right.”
In July, Council Member Shahana Hanif called the privatization of retiree healthcare “immoral.”
“It’s just wrong Council Member Hanif told Work-Bites at Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee [CROC] action in Brooklyn. “I think it’s really time to look at the actual costs of what is going on with retirees. I’ve not seen this kind of organizing campaign [in my first two years in office]. The people are speaking and it’s my responsibility to listen—and I call on my colleagues to do the same.”
According to Mamdani, Mayor Adams’ ongoing campaign to push municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan is “just one example of the many things that Eric Adams promised when he was running that he has since betrayed.”
“Whether it's municipal healthcare benefits, whether it's the bus lanes that he promised to build out, whether it's the portion of the budget that he said he would allocate to parks…. time and again, we have seen—to use his own words—Eric Adams engaged in a bait and switch,” Mamdani said. “And if I was the mayor of New York City and I was told that there was a need to find money to sustain some of the public sector unions, that money would not be coming from retirees’ health care plans. That should never be the option that we pursue as a city.”
Instead of eliminating one of the vital components that have always made “city jobs” attractive to New Yorkers, Mamdani said he would make working for the City of New York an even more enticing career option than it is now.
“As the next mayor of the city, I would not only protect the promises that have historically been made to municipal workers, but to improve upon them,” he said. “I think that there is a desperate need to make the most critical positions across our city more attractive to New Yorkers, but also more in line with the actual value that they create.”