Still rotating

Some are rotating still, albeit on a yearly basis. Are you one of these folks? How do you get excessed?

NYC Retirees’ Struggle to Save Traditional Medicare is a National Fight

From Work-Bites, March 22, 2023:

Retirees that have tried Medicare Advantage are not happy with it, probably owing to the denials of service / coverage.

Studies show disenrollments from Medicare Advantage plans are, indeed, on the rise — up from 10 percent in 2017 to 17 percent in 2021. The Kaiser Family Foundation [KFF] also finds that over two million prior authorization requests were denied that same year — with only 11 percent appealed.

Read the entire post here on the betrayal of the New York City municipal retirees by their unions and elected officials of both parties. The article discusses how this attack on Medicare access is a national fight. The article focuses on struggles in New York, Vermont and Washington state. Many of the activists in the New York City area that you've heard of and experts that you may not have heard of.

NYC Retirees’ Struggle to Save Traditional Medicare is a National Fight

Among the organizations and their activists cited: Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee [CROC], New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees [NYCOPSR]; and then, several in the Seattle, Puget Sound, Washington area.

Another important set of quotes and information on how this disaster of federally sanctioned denial of medical care --all for corporate profit-- worsened:

At 90, Dr. Leonard Rodberg, professor emeritus of Urban Studies at Queens College in New York City is one of the fiercest opponents of Democratic Mayor Eric Adams’ relentless drive to Medicare Advantage. Nevertheless, the veteran academic says he’s willing to accept labor leaders supportive of the privatization scheme are “principled, honorable people” who simply believe “Medicare Advantage is good because Aetna tells them this is good as SeniorCare [Medicare].”

“It’s just a lie — and they bought it,” Dr. Rodberg says.

Johnson maintains bigwigs from both the Republican and Democratic parties have been pushing healthcare for a long time, and that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has become a “revolving door for the insurance industry.”

He’s critical of Dr. Elizabeth Fowler — deputy administrator and director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation and former executive vice-president of programs at the Commonwealth Fund and vice-president for Global Health Policy at Johnson & Johnson — for her role in crafting the Senate version of the Affordable Care Act [ACA] while acting as Chief Health Counsel to Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus [D-MT].

“She is largely responsible for the fact that we don’t have the ability to negotiate over prescription drugs; why there was not a public option within the ACA; and she has been in the insurance industry,” Johnson says.

A “small, little paragraph” within the “humungous” ACA bill, Johnson points out, allows for “different forms of providing Medicare without Congressional approval.”

“That’s how ACO REACH or prior to that, Direct Contact under the Trump administration, came about,” Johnson says. “It was, ‘We’re gonna open up Medicare to Wall Street and Congress can’t take it away from us.’”

URGENT CALL TO ACTION! Rally For NYC Employees' Healthcare & Attend City Council Meeting Tuesday, 4/11 at 12 PM

URGENT CALL TO ACTION!

Rally For Our Healthcare & Attend City Council Meeting, Tuesday, April 11th at 12 PM

*Retirees + Active City Workers*

Educators, let’s unite with retirees and city workers.

Learn more here about this City Hall rally here.

AND:

Please be sure to sign and circulate this petition to preserve our healthcare.

"Dear friend,

Our allies, NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees have put out this urgent call to action for a rally at City Hall this coming Tuesday, April 11, at 12 PM, to all city retirees and all active city workers:

**************

"This is a call to rally for us to be heard! Time is of the essence!

Afterwards, we will be attending the City Council meeting & urging them to introduce our proposed bill!!

Bring your loved ones. This affects them too! This rally is for retirees and retirees in training (in-service/active workers).

This is your healthcare that the Municipal Labor Committee - dominated by the UFT and DC37, agreed to diminish. eliminating all our health plans and forcing us into Medicare Advantage. This is anti-labor and Un-American.

Medicare is a public health benefit! Be there with us!"

*************

In light of the unilateral decisions to force retired civil servants and essential workers who dedicated their lives in service to New York City into a diminished healthcare network and the MLC's secret, undisclosed proposed changes to active worker healthcare, its time we galvanize together to tell the City, and those who represent us, that we stand UNITED FOR OUR PREMIUM-FREE, QUALITY HEALTHCARE.

Make plans to attend this coming Tuesday. We need everyone there."

Also, please sign this letter to the New York City Council.

EMERGENCY MOBILIZATION: TODAY, 3/9, 11:30: 1 Bowling Green, NYC NO Medicare Dis-Advantage for New York City Municipal Retirees

EMERGENCY MOBILIZATION

NO Medicare Dis-Advantage for New York City Municipal Retirees

New York City Municipal retirees have been fighting for almost three years to prevent the City from switching our excellent traditional public Medicare with a supplement to an inferior, privatized Medicare Advantage Plan. After a successful lawsuit challenge, the City tried doing an "end run" by lobbying the City Council to change a law that has protected our healthcare for decades-- Administrative Code 12-126. This change would not only have affected retirees but could have also diminished current city workers' health benefits.

Retirees fought back and the City Council did not make this change.

Now the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC) and the Mayor are on the verge of forcing us into a life threatening for-profit Aetna/CVS Medicare Advantage plan with the vote by the MLC taking place on March 9th.

If this " nuclear option" is approved, retirees will no longer have the choices they have always had. They will be forced into the new Aetna Medicare Advantage plan and if they opt out they will lose all other NYC health benefits they and their dependents have always received: no Medigap coverage, no drug plan and no health coverage for family dependents.

When: Thursday, March 9th, 2023 at 11:30am

Where: Gather at 11:30am by the steps of the Smithsonian Museum across from Battery Park (next to the Bowling Green 4 and 5 subway stop)

What: After brief remarks, we will march past the offices of the UFT, PSC, OLR and DC37 and end up in front of City Hall. There will be short statements at each location from various union members. Arrive at City Hall by 1pm

A Facebook page for retirees to follow:
CROC

An article on this fight, in 'Labor Notes' magazine, March 8, 2023: 'New York City Retirees Fight Their Own Unions to Stop Catastrophic Health Care Cuts'