NYC Retirees Journey to Albany! Press the Fight Against Medicare dis-Advantage!
A group of New York City municipal retirees led by Michelle Keller [right] walk the halls of the State Capitol in support of the Health Equity for Retirees Act. Photos/Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
New York City municipal retirees fighting to retain the Medicare coverage they were promised when they entered civil service rode Albany-bound buses for more than 150 miles and plied the halls of state power for over two hours on April 15, all in support of legislation aimed at protecting what they’ve already earned.
They were teachers, transit workers, cops, and firefighters — and they were the widows and widowers of first responders, too.
Kathy Vigiano’s late husband Joseph Vincent Vigiano was killed on September 11, 2001 trying to save New Yorkers as the Twin Towers came tumbling down.
“Health benefits for our surviving spouses should never be diminished,” Kathy Vigiano said in support of Health Equity for Retirees Act [S8388/A7866]. “Medicare Advantage plans are not what we want as many of our doctors and hospitals do not accept them. These widows and widowers have the best health care available — and that’s traditional Medicare.”
Vigiano died on 9/11 trying to save as many people as he could — but now the City of New York and the heads of the largest public sector unions in town want to take away his widow’s health care and stick her with a demonstratively diminished and scandal-plagued Medicare Advantage plan that makes money by denying people care.
New York City Municipal retirees gather outside State Senator Jessica Ramos’ office.
“I call on the Assembly people and the State Senate people who have not signed onto these bills to do so immediately,” 91-year-old municipal retiree Evie Jones-Rich said. “We deserve the credit for building these great cities and states of New York. And now, in our old age, like me at 91, we are going to collect — or we are coming after you.”
The Health Equity for Retirees Act currently has bipartisan support in the New York State Legislature. As written it, “Prohibits public employers from diminishing health insurance benefits provided to retirees and their dependents or the contributions such employer makes for such health insurance coverage below the level of such benefits or contributions made on behalf of such retirees and dependents by the public employer as of December 31, 2021.”
New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and the so-called “most progressive City Council” to date have refused to allow sister legislation to advance at the local level.
The municipal retirees who went to Albany this week to lobby their representatives on behalf of the Health Equity for Retirees Act were also legally blind, stricken with arthritis, more than a few had stared down cancer and won.
"I stand here today in solidarity with municipal workers because just like them, promises were made to us and they have to be kept,” TWU Local 100 Retirees member Anita Clinton said. “In our last contract, our union took traditional Medicare away from retirees and put us into Aetna Medicare Advantage. We like to call it Medicare dis-Advantage because we know it’s nothing but a scam.”
New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees President Marianne Pizzitola stands with fellow municipal retirees before the door-to-door lobbying commenced inside the State Capitol.
Clinton, a former MTA mechanic — among the first women to ever perform that duty in the City of New York — also noted just how dangerous transit jobs are. Indeed, Covid took the lives of some 177 transit workers during the pandemic.
“Transit workers have some of the most dangerous jobs on the planet,” Clinton continued. “We work in tunnels, we work on the [elevated] structure, we’re bus operators, conductors, and we work during blackouts, during snow storms, we worked through Covid. We have paid into Medicare. That’s what we deserve, and that is what we are here to get.”
State Senator Pete Harckham [D,WF-40th District] is now spearheading the Health Equity for Retirees Act in New York’s upper chamber.
“With us today, are New York’s best,” he said before the door-to-door lobbying commenced. “Men and women who have toiled for decades making New York and their local municipalities what it is. When people get into government service there’s not a promise of wealth. People get into this work because they love their community, they love their state — and there is a guarantee of a comfortable retirement. Suddenly, to change their healthcare after they’ve retired and after they have been promised certain benefits is patently unfair — and we are here to say no.”
New York City municipal retirees [l to r] Myra Hauben, Evie Jones-Rich and Lizette Colon make their legislative rounds.
NYC’s powerbrokers pushing profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plans may be particularly craven in their efforts — but they ain’t alone. Municipalities across the country crying poverty and eager to save a buck have swallowed the insurance industry’s slick sales pitch whole and jumped on the very same Medicare Advantage bandwagon. Never mind the voluminous reporting done exposing the fraud and predatory practices that come with those plans.
Everyone who buys into a Medicare Advantage plan, of course, is told theirs will be “customized” for their particular constituency’s needs. But as Harckham noted, “Consumer advocates have been sounding the alarm about these plans for years, and their diminished benefits.”
Retirees ran into a lot of closed doors as they made their rounds inside the Capitol Building’s long marble corridors this week. Either “in conference” or what have you, none of the legislators retirees were actually there to lobby on behalf of the Health Equity for Retirees Act was around to talk to them.
Staffers, instead, would sometimes come to the doorway, listen to their concerns, and thank them for dropping by. The legislative aides Work-Bites spoke to said they had no idea New York City retirees would be visiting on Monday to lobby their bosses. Others were unsure if their bosses had signed onto the Health Equity for Retirees Act.
One group of retirees who visited State Senator Jessica Ramos’ office expressed concern the Labor Committee Chair hadn’t signed on to be a cosponsor of the bill. Senator Ramos’ office later told Work-Bites they are still in the thick of budget negotiations and are “reviewing the legislation.”
New York City municipal retirees put in a lot of leg work in Albany this week.
“We are not going to stand for our healthcare to be privatized — and definitely not privatized while in retirement,” New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees President Marianne Pizzitola said on Monday. “We were promised that if we took our jobs working for the city or our municipalities, that when we retired we would have specific benefits.”
In New York City, civil servants coming onto the job were promised they would have Medicare — and a city supplement. Coverage that Mayor Eric Adams and the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee now want farm out to a Medicare Advantage plan run by Aetna.
And never mind that candidate Adams denounced the scheme as a “bait and switch” when former Mayor Bill de Blasio was peddling it.
“To try and force us into privatized Medicare Advantage plans that many our doctors and hospitals do not accept — and you read around the country that more and more hospitals systems are dropping — that are riddled with prior authorizations that are meant to deny care to people especially at the most vulnerable times of their lives when their healthcare is is needed most — this is absolutely abhorrent,” Pizzitola said, “and we will not stand for that.”