By Joe Maniscalco

Aetna is one the largest private health insurance companies in the United States today, in the top 10, in fact. And this week, we learned the company is alleging to have handled 82 million Medicare Advantage claims last year alone — and out of that vast number, they say, “only” 3.4% were subjected to prior approval, with a mere 0.49% ultimately being denied. Whoa!

By Bob Hennelly

UFT President Michael Mulgrew’s working with Mayor Adams to push New York City’s 250,000 retired municipal employees into a controversial for-profit Medicare Advantage health insurance plan appears to be paying dividends for his union’s active members under terms of a tentative contract announced June 13 at City Hall.

By Joe Maniscalco

Is there a possibility — now that Comptroller Brad Lander has declined to register the city’s Medicare Advantage contract with Aetna — New York City Mayor Eric Adams will reconsider his plan to strip municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare coverage? 

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander isn’t gonna help Mayor Eric Adams and the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] strip municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare coverage and push them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan.

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

Canada is on fire.

The smog fallout downwind has set off air quality alerts for 13 states south of the border with the worst air quality currently being reported in upstate New York from Syracuse to Binghamton. Toxic smog has extended down along the East Coast and into the Ohio Valley as millions of Americans are being advised to curtail outdoor activity if they have pre-existing health conditions.

By Joe Maniscalco

Former profit-driven health insurance industry insider turned profit-driven health insurance industry foil Wendell Potter thinks it’s possible to “at least begin to slow” the privatization of traditional Medicare, but that we need Democrats running both houses of Congress and the White House.

By Bob Hennelly

Last month marked the 21st anniversary of the end of the official clean-up in lower Manhattan of the 9/11 World Trade Center attack and the fires that persisted for months after the collapse of the Twin Towers. In the years since, more people have died from their exposure to the toxic air than the close to 3,000 that perished the day of the attack.

By Steve Wishnia

Editor’s Note: This is Part II of special two-part Work-Bites series on New York State’s nursing home crisis. Part I is here. 

If the owners of for-profit nursing homes are shuffling money around multiple related companies to conceal income and increase profits, what can be done about it?

By Bob Hennelly

Editor’s Note: This story has been revised from a previously published version.

The tentative contract deal reached earlier this week between TWU Local 100 and the MTA provides for “solid annual raises of 9.8 percent compounded over three years-and $4,000 in Essential Worker Cash Bonus payments-that are substantially better than the city pattern,” according to the union’s press release announcing the deal. 

By Joe Maniscalco

Nancy Losinno still remembers her husband Joseph returning home in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 absolutely devastated by all the death and suffering he experienced as a faithful member of the FDNY. New Yorkers back then were constantly being exhorted to “Never Forget.” Nancy never needed to be told.

By Steve Wishnia

Editor’s Note: This is part one of a special two-part Work-Bites series on New York State’s nursing home crisis.

A growing business model among nursing-home owners is connected to worse care, worse conditions, and worse pay for workers — and its structure makes it much harder to regulate.

By Steve Wishnia

About 50 retired city workers, some with canes, a few with walkers, and some wearing prop “screws” going through their heads, made their way to the Brooklyn Bridge this morning for a face-off with New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

By Bob Hennelly

Is the MTA’s Addiction to Tax Exempt Borrowing Making Wealth Inequality Worse?

Talks are making progress this week between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Transport Workers Union Local 100 which represents the 40,000 workers who run the city’s vast subway and bus network, according to John Samuelsen, TWU international president.

By Joe Maniscalco

The powerful political machine bent on bulldozing New York City municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage program is kicking into high gear ahead of a special “People’s Hearing & Rally” set for Wednesday, May 24, outside City Hall.

By Bob Hennelly

A class action lawsuit that alleges New York City engaged in discriminatory employment practices in how it compensates hundreds of its probation officers may proceed over the objections of the Adams administration, federal Southern District Judge Ronnie Abrams ruled on May 5.

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

By Bob Hennelly

On May 11, the day President Joe Biden declared an end to the COVID emergency, hundreds of nurses were in Trenton demanding enactment of nurse-to-patient staffing ratios as was done in California in 2004 which studies have documented greatly improved patient outcomes, workplace safety, infection control and nurse retention.

By Steve Wishnia

Fed up with chronic conditions of low pay, understaffing, and disrepair, workers at a for-profit nursing home in the Buffalo suburbs will go on strike for 24 hours on Wednesday, May 17.

By Joe Maniscalco

Stripping New York City municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare benefits and pushing them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage program will not deliver the $600 million savings Mayor Eric Adams’ administration claims it will.

By Steve Wishnia

“We don’t want pizza parties. We want pay raises so we can stop the hemorrhaging of staff,” Sonia Lawrence, the New York State Nurses Association’s director for New York City Health + Hospitals facilities, told several hundred nurses and supporters gathered in Foley Square May 10.

By Bob Hennelly

On Thursday, May 11 President Biden will end the COVID public health emergency which was declared three years ago by then President Trump.  It has been widely reported that as many as 15 million Americans will lose their health insurance as the states reevaluate their Medicaid status now that the pandemic is declared over.