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Join Retiree Advocate/UFT - Become a member: $20 annual fee
Send check made out to Retiree Advocate/ UFT
P.O. Box 22567, Brooklyn, NY 11201-2567
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Retiree Advocate is a member of UNITED FOR CHANGE
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We
are participating in the " Be A Hero Day of Action" along with hundreds
of others around the country. We will tell the NY Senators to protect
our public Medicare from Medicare Advantage millionaire CEOs whose focus
is on profits over patient health.
For generations, Medicare has been the rock solid guarantee of
healthcare for seniors and people with disabilities. But now, for-profit
insurance companies have used Medicare (dis)Advantage plans to line
their pockets with BILLIONS of dollars by preventing patients from
getting the care they need.
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, 10,000 Medicare
Advantage patients die every year because their insurance providers
delay them in getting the care their doctor ordered. Recent studies have
also suggested that insurance companies offering Medicare Advantage
plans are overbilling the U.S. Government by 75 Billion dollars every
year.
Join us on July 28th to celebrate Medicare’s 58th Birthday and encourage
our NY Senators, Schumer and Gillibrand, #ReclaimMedicare from
CORPORATE GREED.
List of Sponsors
CROC- Cross Union Retirees Organizing Committee
Metro NY Healthcare for All
NYPL Retirees Association
JFREJ-Jews For Racial & Economic Justice
PNHP-New York Metro Chapter
RetireeAdvocate/UFT
New York Senior Action Council
Professional Staff Congress- PSC
Bring signs and water. It will be hot!
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UFC Statement of Support for OTs/PTs, Nurses, and Audiologists: UFT Must Return Back to the Negotiating Table
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July 25, 2023
On July 10, 2023, the American Arbitration Association (AAA) certified
ratification results for the 2022-2027 UFT-DOE contracts. While most
bargaining units approved their tentative agreements, one did not.
Occupational and physical therapists, nurses, audiologists, nurse
supervisors, and therapist supervisors, who were grouped together as one
bargaining unit, voted down their contract 1,129 to 782. This
bargaining unit also voted down their contract in 2018. In that case,
the UFT went back to the bargaining table and came back with a new
contract that included some improvements – standard procedure when a
contract is voted down.
This time around, OT/PTs in particular voted down their contract in
higher numbers than in 2018. However, instead of forcing the City back
to the bargaining table, UFT leadership appears to be mocking the
democratic process by orchestrating an unprecedented ‘revote’ campaign.
This revote campaign is problematic for several reasons: (1) it denies
the roughly ⅔ majority their chance to go back to the table; (2) it sets
a dangerous precedent to do revotes for unpopular contracts in general
(rather than organize for improvements); (3) in order to garner support
for a revote, UFT leadership seems to be weaponizing their own
unwillingness or inability to renegotiate with the City. For all of
these reasons, our union leadership must take ‘no’ for an answer (from
their members) and go back to the table. That’s how it works – plain and
simple.
United for Change, a coalition of caucuses/groups including New Action,
MORE, Solidarity, ICE-UFT, Retiree Advocate, and Educators of NYC, is
calling on UFT leadership to cease abdicating its duty to represent the
affected bargaining unit in good faith. Instead, we demand that UFT
leadership work forcefully and expeditiously to pressure the city back
to the bargaining table and achieve all necessary improvements to the
contract in question. Our union siblings deserve better than a revote to
make up for poor union leadership. They deserve better than UFT
negotiators capitulating to the city by dragging their feet.
Finally, UFC urges that all UFT members send a message to President
Mulgrew and leadership that now is the time for them to do the work they
were elected to do— represent the rank and file.
Built right into the Federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI or Innovation Center) is a system for permitting Fraud and Abuse.
https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/kay-tillow-on-medicare-fraud-and-abuse-waivers/
July 10, 2023
Health
care corporations in a Medicare privatization program set up by the
Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) are being granted fraud
and abuse waivers.
The program is called the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI or Innovation Center).
Kay Tillow, who is with the group National Single Payer, came across a CMS page titled Fraud and Abuse Waivers that lists the programs that are entitled to the waivers.
Tillow says that the Affordable Care Act of 2010, among its many
provisions, set up the Innovation Center within CMS to promote
experimental models in Medicare that would save money while maintaining
or improving quality, or that would cost the same while improving the
quality of care.
Models approved by CMS can be automatically implemented into Medicare without congressional approval.
Tillow says that the Innovation Center models are not working to accomplish the stated purposes of quality and cost savings.
“The majority have not saved money, and several are on pace to lose
billions of dollars,” reports Bill Frist, former senator and an owner of
the giant hospital chain HCA.
The majority of models do not show significant improvements in quality,
says Brad Smith, former Innovation Center director. The models are
neither saving money nor improving care, but the Innovation Center has
$10 billion dollars to spend each decade and keeps churning out new
models.
How did you come across the fraud and abuse waivers page?
“For a period of time a number of us have been working on the
privatization of Medicare,” Tillow told Corporate Crime Reporter in an
interview last month. “We are concerned about that. And we are concerned
about people who chose traditional Medicare being placed into Direct
Contracting Entities. They were renamed ACO Reach. We were looking into
the extent to which the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
is actually handing over this public program to private equity, private
venture capital, and big insurance companies.”
“I’ve been wandering around, exploring it, working to explain it to
senior groups and other organizations to try and get a movement against
this privatization. Medicare Advantage is being overpaid and is gouging
the Medicare Trust Fund.”
“I read what I can about it. And I came across a CMS web page called
Fraud and Abuse Waivers. It’s an official government CMS website that
lists all of these programs that are given the green light to commit
fraud and abuse.”
How many programs like this are there?
“Dozens I think. I don’t know the exact number. They are part of the
Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). It was born as part
of the Accountable Care Act of 2010 when it was created. All of these
programs are within the CMMI.”
“That is the privatizing machine to turn over healthcare to private
industry, to recreate a kind of managed care organization with middle
men who make money. I don’t know if it’s all of the programs created by
CMMI, but it certainly is many of them.”
What percentage of Medicare enrollees are enrolled in these programs?
“Just barely over 50 percent are in Medicare Advantage programs. Then
there is another 2.2 million in ACO Reach. I think it’s probably
two-thirds or so that are now in one of the privatized programs under
CMS.”
But not all Medicare enrollees are in programs eligible for fraud and abuse waivers.
“No. But there is a program called Value Based Insurance Design (VBID).
It’s a model under the CMMI. That program seems to have something like
over nine million people in it. That program is eligible for Medicare
fraud and abuse waivers.”
“They offer so many dollars a month for groceries, which can be
meaningful for someone who has a very modest income. That’s $70 or so a
month. But that’s peanuts compared to the amount of money the company
will make by getting you into their plan. They can make a lot of money
off of each person who goes in.”
If they weren’t exempt, those companies would be liable under federal criminal laws?
“There are several laws they are exempt from. One is the anti-kickback
law. One provides a monetary penalty for offering beneficiaries
inducements. And then there is a self-referral law. There are several of
these laws that they are being exempted from in order to proceed with
their models.”
Don’t Medicare Advantage do this all the time – offer inducements for
seniors to get out of traditional Medicare and sign up with Medicare
Advantage?
“The major inducement is a lower monthly payment. You can get away with a
low or no premium. Because we have millions of seniors on inadequate
fixed incomes, that’s all that is needed to get people to switch to
Medicare Advantage.”
Is Congress taking a close look at these waivers?
“As far as I know, no one in Congress has said a word about them. I
didn’t know about them until I stumbled on the waiver web page.”
“The insurance companies have a history of violation of law and paying
fines and then going ahead with what they do. Those companies are being
given contracts within the ACO Reach program. They are never kicked out
of the CMS programs.”
The overriding drive behind all of these programs is to privatize Medicare. What portion of Medicare has been privatized?
“It’s over half. Medicare Advantage is 50 percent or so. Then all of
these programs under the ACO Reach program. I would say the overall
number in privatized Medicare is now probably about two-thirds. The
Innovation Center has an announced objective of having all seniors into
these programs, which are privatized, by 2030.”
If you were to ask the average person on the street, they would say that
Republicans are into privatizing Medicare while Democrats are into
defending Medicare, keeping it public.
But here you have the Biden administration saying explicitly, if I’m
understanding you correctly, that they want to privatize Medicare by
2030.
“Yes. Elizabeth Fowler, the head of CMMI, served in the Obama
administration. She was the advisor to Senator Max Baucus and she wrote
the Affordable Care Act. In the Affordable Care Act, she created this
Innovation Center through which the privatization is occurring. And now
she is the director of it. She comes from the insurance industry. She
was with Wellpoint. And then she worked on the Affordable Care Act. And
then she went to Johnson & Johnson. She is an industry person and
government official. And now they are the same people. That’s the
problem.”
“Whether it’s Trump appointees or whether it’s Democratic appointees
they are all doing the same thing, which is privatization through that
Innovation Center.”
Wouldn’t most liberals be shocked to learn that Biden has someone in his
administration whose explicit goal is to privatize Medicare?
“People in general don’t know or understand it. This gets complex and
that’s why it becomes difficult for people within the movement to build
an understanding. They never go under the names that admit what they are
doing. They don’t call it privatization. They call it moving people
into value based payment models. They say they are moving away from fee
for service and into value based payment, that they are going to pay for
quality rather than volume. And that’s their plan for how they are
going to cut back on the cost.”
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