RETIRED LIEUTENANTS ASSOCIATION NYPD
Short of Council support, retirees vow to prevail on Medicare issue
Posted Saturday, January 11, 2025 12:28 pm
BY RICHARD KHAVKINE
City Council legislation that would preserve municipal retirees’ health benefits has so far found little traction, but the retirees and their advocates have vowed to persist in their effort to defeat the Adams administration’s plan to switch the former city workers into an inferior Medicare Advantage plan.
Ten of them met last Friday with Chelsea Council Member Erik Bottcher, who they said declined to support a bill that would prohibit wholesale changes to the retired workers’ health plans.
One person who attended the meeting told the roughly 35 retirees who had assembled outside 250 Broadway that Bottcher said he was waiting to get more information before deciding on whether to support or oppose the bill. “How much more … information do they need?” the person asked rhetorically. “They got it all.”
“They don’t give a shit! They don’t give a shit!,” the retirees chanted in response.
Bottcher’s office did not reply to an email seeking comment.
The bill, introduced by Downtown Manhattan Council Member Christopher Marte last fall, so far has the backing of just six of his colleagues, most of them members of the conservative Common Sense Caucus. It has not been scheduled for a hearing, according to a Council representative.
Marte’s bill is the second legislative effort designed to ensure the city retirees would keep access to their traditional, government-administered Medicare, which is widely thought to be far superior to privately managed Medicare Advantage plans. Former Council Member Charles Barron’s bill, introduced in June 2023, received little support and died without a hearing.
“I don't understand why this is taking so long,” Marianne Pizzitola, the president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees, said following the meeting with Bottcher. “This should be common sense. You protect Medicare, you protect retirees, you protect your municipal workers…. And we should not have to keep coming out here in the cold, in the rain, in the summer, every four seasons, to keep fighting to protect a federal public health benefit.”
While neither the Council, the Adams administration nor the heads of the municipal unions have indicated a willingness to discuss the issue with the retirees, courts have consistently sided with claims that switching them to a private plan would break assurances and promises made decades ago.
State lawmakers weigh in
The retirees’ latest judicial victory came last month, when, in a unanimous decision, the state’s Court of Appeals found that the city's administrative code requires the city to pay up to the statutory cap for all plans it offers to its employees and former workers, including, for the city’s roughly 250,000 retirees, Medicare supplement insurance, or so-called Medigap plans.
The retirees have also received the support of several state lawmakers, who last month sent a letter to Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and her Council colleagues noting Medicare Advantage plans’ “abject failure.”
The letter noted private insurance companies’ increasing reliance on artificial intelligence to deny prior authorization for treatment. The letter cited a report by a U.S. Senate subcommittee that concluded that one prominent Medicare Advantage plan prioritized profits over care. “Under no circumstances should the City of New York be rewarding corporate greed at the expense of retirees’ lives,” the letter, signed by 26 state Senate and Assembly members, said.
It urged the Council to pass Marte’s bill. “We strongly urge you to support and quickly pass this legislation, not just to protect retirees' access to health care, but to set an example for the country that we should not trade our seniors’ lives for insurance companies’ profits,” the lawmakers wrote.
On Friday, Pizzitola, joined by representatives from several neighborhood political associations at the meeting with Bottcher, said the retirees would recruit candidates to run against Council members who decline to support the legislation. “We’re going to take this home and we’re going to start educating all of their constituents” that their Council member is not supporting retirees.
Pizzitola said she and her allies would continue to lobby for the bill, including through one-on-one meetings with Council members.
richardk@thechiefleader.com
Facebook Twitter Instagram
Retired Lieutenants Association NYPD | 266-19 Hillside Avenue | Floral Park, NY 11004 US