‘Yes - We Must Have a Blue Ribbon Panel’ on Medicare (Dis)Advantage

Opponents of the city’s plan to push municipal retirees into a Medicare Advantage plan are demanding a blue ribbon panel to “dig us out of this mess.” Above: Retirees hold a die-in outside City Hall protesting Medicare Advantage last year. Photos by Joe Maniscalco

By Joe Maniscalco

Is there a more consequential issue facing the folks in city government today than the plan backed by the mayor and the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee to push New York City’s retirees into a for-profit private health insurance plan calling itself “Medicare Advantage?”

You’d think convening a blue ribbon panel consisting of all the stakeholders involved to try and figure this all out in a smart, intelligent way would be tops on everyone’s list. That’s what retirees looking at all the fraud, delays and denials surrounding for-profit Medicare Advantage-type plans want.

But it looks like you’d be wrong.

Work-Bites reached out to Mayor Eric Adams, NYC Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, DC 37 Executive-Director Henry Garrido, and UFT President Michael Mulgrew for their thoughts on establishing a blue ribbon panel on the proposed plan to re-write the city’s Administrative Code and completely transform municipal retirees’ healthcare as we know it.

Everyone just mentioned was either mum on the idea of convening a blue ribbon panel on the push for Medicare Advantage — or a “no comment.” Only Caitlin Kelmar, chief of staff for Council Member Christopher Marte [D-District 1] was willing to talk openly, calling it a “new demand” and one the office hasn’t heard before.

Marte is considered one of the best champions municipal retirees opposing the Medicare Advantage push have in the New York City Council.

“We’re definitely open to an idea like that,” Kelmar told Work-Bites. “We take our lead from the retirees — and happy to support them.”

Stuart Eber is chair of the Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations and president emeritus of the New York City Managerial Employees Association. He is one of many voices now calling for the blue ribbon panel — and he has a clear idea of who should be on it.

“Yes, he told Work-Bites in an e-mail this week, “we must have a blue ribbon panel chaired by a former City executive, including retirees, the Comptroller, Public Advocate, City Council, Administration and MLC to dig us out of this mess.”

To be sure, city council members are under lots of pressure and being lobbied left and right — all the more reason for convening a blue ribbon panel of stakeholders to sort it all out.

“There are so many other options that you would think the city would explore.” — Sarah Shapiro, Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee

Earlier this month, Speaker Adams told reporters she and her colleagues in the city council are “still discussing and still receiving briefings — I kid you not, on a daily basis” and “we are still trying to get clarity on both sides of the issue.”

The drive to privatize municipal retiree healthcare plans is not happening in a New York City vacuum, however. Far from it.

Just last month, lawmakers in Delaware decided to back off plans to throw municipal retirees in that state into a Medicare Advantage plan after facing a torrent of opposition blistering the entire scheme as “screwed up,” “absurd” and “unconscionable.”

Retirees all across the country are currently being bombarded with Medicare Advantage advertisements that watchdogs say “obscure the often-life-threatening restrictions and bank-account draining demands that are common in Medicare Advantage plans.”

“There are so many other options that you would think the city would explore,” Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee organizer Sarah Shapiro,” recently told Work-Bites. “And I don’t understand my union — the UFT — for going along with this because the city cannot do anything without the approval and negotiation of the MLC.”

Shapiro says Michael Mulgrew and Henry Garrido are “pretending like, ‘Oh, the city is gonna do this to us.’”

“Well,” Shapiro continued, “they are in the room with the city — they could say ‘no.’ They could simply say ‘no’ and they could stand with their employees and with their retirees — but it doesn’t seem like they are.”