Written and edited by Norm Scott:
EDUCATE! ORGANIZE!! MOBILIZE!!!
Three pillars of The Resistance – providing information on current ed issues, organizing activities around fighting for public education in NYC and beyond and exposing the motives behind the education deformers. We link up with bands of resisters. Nothing will change unless WE ALL GET INVOLVED IN THE STRUGGLE!
I went to one of my doctors yesterday and he's trying to pressure me into taking an expensive test I clearly don't need. The naked profit motive. Medicare will pay but I'm conscious of how that undermines Medicare in the long run. I'd be acting like Mulgrew. I won't do it. In the podcast I delve into the ideology of the UFT/Unity caucus that leads to decisions like pushing MulgrewCare and also 20 years ago, privatized education like charters.
the advertising, the television commercials, the hamburger
sliders, the endless catered lunches, the agency money, the plane
tickets to Europe — are all, directly or not, contributing to this
enormous cost.” --- This is what Mulgew supports.
Worth the listen! Norm Scott unpacks the failed attempt by@UFTUnity to privatize retiree Medicare with Mulgrewcare
@NormScott1has been a tireless union activist & once again proving his mettle in helping to lead organize our petition campaign.
Nice words from my UFC colleagues.
What a pleasure to Zoom meet Noah who interviewed me for his Professional Development: The New York City Teacher Podcast Monday night. He certainly does his research and the hour spent talking to a young NYC teacher was a pleasure - and I just signed up as a patron to get all his podcasts. He has been doing it since July and I am addicted, catching up on back issues. I first heard his of him with his Nick Bacon interview on the Feb. DA which was excellent: Ep 29- What REALLY Happened at the February DA.mp3
Hey Norm,
The show is up and ready to be heard! It can be found at the following locations (among others):
This week Norm Scott, a retired NYC DOE teacher, long-time unionist, and blogger, stops by to tell us all about Mulgrewcare, a foiled (or is it?) attempt by the UFT leadership to deprive retirees of their proper, hard-earned benefits OR balance the books after a poorly-executed contract negotiation by collecting their hard-earned money in the form of new, illegal premiums for the same coverage they have always had. We discuss the parallels between Unity's willingness to privatize healthcare and the neoliberal drive to privatize schools, most notably via the charter movement, and much more!
This week Norm Scott, a retired NYC DOE teacher, long-time unionist, and
blogger, stops by to tell us all about Mulgrewcare, a foiled (or is
it?) attempt by the UFT leadership to deprive retirees of their proper,
hard-earned benefits OR balance the books after a poorly-executed
contract negotiation by collecting their hard-earned money in the form
of new, illegal premiums for the same coverage they have always had. We
discuss the parallels between Unity's willingness to privatize
healthcare and the neoliberal drive to privatize schools, most notably
via the charter movement, and much more! Read more of Norm's work at ednotesonline.com
Emphasizing the cruelty of Mulgrew in opposing true cost-saving solutions to costs of medical services by favoring profit making private insurance and degrading the public options.
"survived the ongoing catastrophe of for-profit
medical care.... a
ready solution to the problem — which, Maloney implies, is inseparable
from the very structures of capitalism."
And one thing we know- in the 60 years of Unity Caucus leadership of the UFT, unmitigated support for the unfettered outrages of capitalism
NYT Book Review By Sarah Manguso
COST OF LIVING
Essays
By Emily Maloney
The
illness narrative, ending in financial ruin and decreased quality of
life, has become one of the classic 21st-century American stories. In
her debut essay collection, Emily Maloney documents the complex
intersections of money, illness and medicine. For Maloney, the primary
experience of receiving health care is not merely a bodily or spiritual
event but always, also, a financial one. She understands on a granular
level the relationship of money to being ill, to developing a drug, to
housing and caring for patients and, of course, to managing an
unfathomable amount of debt. Her broad perspective is hard won; at
different times she has been a multiply diagnosed chronically ill
patient, an E.M.T., an emergency room medical technician, a drug rep, a
data analyst, a medical writer, a medical debtor and an American citizen
who has — so far — survived the ongoing catastrophe of for-profit
medical care.
The precipitating event
in “Cost of Living” is the author’s psychiatric hospitalization at 19:
“It wasn’t that I had wanted to die, exactly. It was more that I just
couldn’t keep living.” Maloney’s choice of a nearby, independent
hospital’s emergency room over the bigger university hospital “where the
state might pick up your bill if you were declared indigent” leads to
the crushing debt at the heart of the book. “Sitting on a cot in the
emergency room, I filled out paperwork certifying myself as the
responsible party for my own medical care — signed it without looking,
anchoring myself to this debt, a stone dropped in the middle of a
stream. This debt was the cost of living.”
As
Maloney pries deeper into the machine of American health care, she
finds no central mechanism other than that of the eternal
money-go-round. By the time she gets to the conference at which doctors
are painstakingly comped for their attendance at brunches with “soggy
pastries” amid “transfer of value” concerns, I had lost all hope for a
ready solution to the problem — which, Maloney implies, is inseparable
from the very structures of capitalism.
Each
essay documents a different kind of structural failure, caused or
complicated by capital and inevitably ending in harm to patients. In
one, Maloney is prescribed 26 psychiatric medications for what turns out
to be a vitamin D deficiency, hypothyroidism and a neurologically based
developmental disorder. In another, as an E.R. tech she is trained to
“bill up” — increasing charges if at all possible — but she secretly
perfects the occult art of minimizing patient cost without tripping any
corporate alarms.
Embedding
herself into various corners of the bureaucratic medical machine,
Maloney describes everyone she encounters with the same perspicacity.
“There’s a fine line between a pain patient and a drug addict,” she
writes, “and sometimes patients go back and forth across it.” “Elizabeth
… was what we called a frequent flier, someone who was unable to make
sense of the world she lived in and so she came to us instead, a kind of
tent revival in our suburban hospital, for healing.” A medical student,
meanwhile, is “a strange mix of sweaty and cavalier.”
Thanks
to her experiences, Maloney is able to see the cracks in what a less
informed patient might experience, simply, as care: “At my doctor’s
office for a masked annual physical, my internist depression screens me.
I know it’s because Epic, the online medical record system he uses,
prompts him to do so. Northwestern Medicine is part of a program that
uses an installation of Epic that depression screens everyone.”
While
working as a medical publications manager at a pharmaceutical company,
where she becomes a part of the conference circuit for the first time,
she is struck by the sheer scale of the apparatus. “Yes, the research
everyone does is important. Yes, the work to take a drug from
preclinical stages to the market is huge and hugely expensive. But the
rest — the advertising, the television commercials, the hamburger
sliders, the endless catered lunches, the agency money, the plane
tickets to Europe — are all, directly or not, contributing to this
enormous cost.”
Maloney’s essays read
as if they were begun in low light, with little sense of where they were
going or how far. They start with a question and work things out on the
page. They don’t seem concerned about arriving at a grand unified
theory of anything. They notice everything and have nothing to prove.
They don’t prematurely grasp at an ending. These qualities combine to
elevate this collection far above the usual first-person essayistic
fare. The challenges of Maloney’s background — familial trauma, poor
medical care, occasional indigence — form part of the back story, but
they are ultimately beside the point of this book. Her broad authority
and the quality of the prose — astute, compassionate and lethally funny —
are what make these essays remarkable. Maloney is an exceptionally
alert writer on whom nothing is lost, who sees everything with
excruciating clarity, including the unassailable fact that in this
country, there is currently no tidy passage through the interconnected
quagmires of illness, money and care.
Sarah Manguso is the author of eight books, most recently the novel “Very Cold People.”
Listen to Mulgrew brag about the plan he designed and promoted and attacked those of us who were critical. Hear Mulgrew talk about how proud he was about the MedAdv - until he abandoned it after the judge ruled in our favor.
And don't forget -- if you support medicare for all/single payer, backing Mulgrew and Unity Caucus is a total contradiction.
Mulgrew and De Blasio dipped into a fund solely designed to offset
the healthcare inflation costs. And then Mike convinced the MLC to
follow his lead.
Then, in 2021,
when Mulgrew and the UFT-led MLC were backed into a corner by the mayor
to replenish this now depleted fund, they designed and tried to sell us
all, a privatized Medicare Advantage plan, that penalizes city retirees
for their healthcare choices and burdens them with scores of
pre-authorizations, to pay for his mediocre labor agreements of the
past.
Mulgrewcare would have forced all of our city’s retirees into
an ill-conceived managed plan, or retirees who opted out would have to
pay well over $2000 to $4000 a year to keep their existing coverage
promised to them by the City.
On March 3rd, 2022, a Manhattan judge ruled in favor of the retirees who
were opting out of this failed, coerced plan. The law says the city
cannot charge retirees or active city employees for healthcare unless it
is above the cost of the HIP plan. This is the language the judge used
in citing the city’s administrative code: “
This section states unequivocally that “[t]he City will pay the
entire cost of health insurance coverage for city employees, city
retirees, and their dependents, not to exceed one hundred percent of the
full cost of H.I.P.-H.M.O. on a category basis.”
The city and unions (the Municipal Labor Committee) were violating
the law by agreeing to charge all of our city’s retirees who wanted to
keep their current Senior Care supplemental Medicare insurance $191 per
month if they opted out of the new privatized Mulgrewcare.
Now, that Mulgrewcare is dead, for now,
we must make sure Mulgrew never again places our most seasoned civil
servants, retirees, and our current in-service UFT members in harm’s
way. He also has designs on our next UFT contract, too, with his
penchant for healthcare givebacks and weak negotiating posture.
In April of 2022, UFT members must vote him and his Unity caucus OUT!
--- While silent as NYC DOE with assistance from the UFT opens schools wide to variants by unmasking. Other unions won't sit by.
MEDIA NOTE: NEA President Becky Pringle
will be on the ground in Minnesota on Tuesday (March 8) in solidarity
with the educators of Minneapolis who are calling for safe and stable
schools. The National Education Association is the national
affiliate of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Education
Support Professionals and represents 3 million educators
nationwide. President Pringle can provide the national perspective and
is available for media interviews. Please contact Richard Allen Smith of NEA Communications at 202-716-6461 or rasmith@nea.org.
Minneapolis educators to strike Tuesday for safe and stable schools
MINNEAPOLIS, March 7, 2022
– The educators of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Education
Support Professionals will go on strike Tuesday for the safe and stable
schools students deserve. Despite days in public bargaining and
mediations, including more than 65 hours in the last week, the district
continues to refuse to work with MFT to create systemic change and
remains entrenched in the unacceptable status quo.
President
Greta Callahan of the MFT teachers chapter, President Shaun Laden of
the MFT ESP chapter and the presidents of Education Minnesota, the
American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association
will attend a news conference at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday outside Justice Page
Middle School, 1W. 49th S., Minneapolis.
The
members of the MFT will begin picketing outside their schools and other
worksites at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday. The membership will come together for a
large rally at 12:15 p.m. at the Minneapolis Public Schools Nutrition
Center, 812
Plymouth Avenue North, Minneapolis, before marching approximately 1
mile to the MPS Davis Center, 1250 W Broadway Ave, Minneapolis.
Logistics:
Picketing begins at schools and other worksites at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday
News conference with MFT presidents and state and national presidents 7:30 a.m. Tuesday at Justice Page Middle School, 1W. 49th S., Minneapolis
Rally starting at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday at Minneapolis Public Schools Nutrition Center, 812 Plymouth Avenue North, Minneapolis
Laden
said: “This bargaining campaign started with the very simple idea that
for the education support professionals who are told every day that our
schools can’t run without us, one job should be enough. We’re the most
racially diverse group of educators in a district with administrators
who say they care about racial equity. We have been demanding that the
administrators at the bargaining table put their money where their mouth
is and they have refused. Now is the time for the school board to
intervene and settle a deal that pays ESP a starting wage of $35,000 a
year.”
Callahan
said: “For almost two years, we’ve been trying to reach agreements
around safe and stable schools for students and those closest to them,
but the administration has stubbornly defended an unacceptable status
quo. We are the defenders of public education and we’re not going to
slow down, or give up, until we make real progress addressing the mental
health crisis in our schools, reducing class sizes and caseloads so
students are receiving the individualized attention they need, and
increasing educator compensation so that we don’t continue to lose
staff, especially educators of color, to surrounding districts and other
professions.”
Denise
Specht, president of Education Minnesota, said: “Nearly 90,000
educators across Minnesota are standing with our union family in
Minneapolis because what they’re fighting for is what we’re all fighting
for: Schools that will give every student the chance to pursue their
dreams. The same issues are being negotiated all over the state, from
living wages for ESPs, to more mental health supports for students, to
managing the crushing caseload for SpEd teachers, to recruiting and
retaining more teachers of color, to creating time for educators to
give their students enough individual attention. We’re in a rich state
with a $9.25 billion surplus. No educator should have to fight this hard
for the schools our students deserve, but if that’s what it takes,
we’re with you.”
Becky
Pringle, president of the National Education Association, said: “With
over $250 million in pandemic relief funds, the time is now to invest in
the safe and stable schools that Minneapolis students need now more
than ever. The three million members of the National Education
Association are proud to stand with our siblings in Minneapolis. The
last two years have demonstrated that the status quo is not good enough.
Minneapolis students and their families have weathered a pandemic,
continued police violence, and an economic system that has left
students, their families, and educators behind. These students deserve
class sizes small enough for one-to-one attention as well as investments
in mental health services and social-emotional learning. MPS must also
invest in systematic changes that improve the recruitment and retention
of educators of color as well as a living wage for education support
professionals. Education support professionals represent a critical
workforce in our schools providing essential supports students depend
on. MPS has the resources to make these investments. The question is
whether they value Minneapolis students as much as their educators do.”
Randi
Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said:
“The federal government has provided an unprecedented amount of recovery
funding to school districts to address problems related to the
pandemic, including student recovery, staff shortages and school safety.
There is no excuse for districts to make cuts in light of this historic
infusion of funds. And the economy is showing real signs of growth.
Indeed, Minnesota just announced a $9.25 billion surplus.
“Our
kids, their families and educators have been through tremendous
challenges in the last two years; they have done their share to navigate
the rough seas together. Educators and students should be the
priorities, and districts should provide the conditions and environment
they need to succeed. School districts should respect their educators
and ensure that students have the programs and services they need to
thrive,” Weingarten said.
The union’s safe and stable schools agenda includes:
Paying
a living wage for education support professionals to stabilize this
critical workforce, because students need the stability of working with
one paraprofessional throughout the school year. For ESPs, this means
raising the starting salary from about $24,000 a year to $35,000 through
increases in hours and rate of pay.
Making systemic changes to improve the recruitment and retention of educators of color, which benefits all of MPS.
Improving
student-to-mental health professional ratios because students shouldn’t
have to wait weeks for an appointment with a counselor or social
worker.
Lowering class sizes because students learn best when their classrooms aren’t overcrowded and underfunded.
Paying
competitive salaries for licensed staff to stop the exodus of teachers
from MPS. State data show the average salary of Minneapolis teachers is
ranked 28 out of 46 districts in the seven-county metro area.
In other news: Exploring UFT/Unity Caucus links to Big Pharm and Healthcare giants trying to kill public options for their own profit
If it looks like a duck, etc. The outcome of all Mulgrew policy is to kill Medicare and support the industry in partnerships.
Think of MulgrewDoubleSpeak - He not only supported the MedAdv, but bragged about designing it. Then after the judge ruled he said he was no longer supporting it because if the opt-outers don't have to pay it is no longer worth it. Thus he reveled the intentions all along --- to make us pay for the savings along with the future denials of service for those who didn't opt out.
You might wonder why the UFT/Unity/Mulgrew team is so much against medicare for all and pro-privatized healthcare.
Links between the UFT and privatizing scuzballs are being explored. As we know the Unity/UFT leaderhsip is an outpost of the center right corporate Democrats so search there. Here's one potential connectionThe
Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF) from a few years ago. Remember, Mulgrew raided the stabilization fund in 2014 and made the deal to screw us on healthcare in 2018 to replace that fund.
“The
Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF), a nonprofit
created to oppose plans to create a comprehensive, universal
health care system, paid almost $760,000 to Bully Pulpit Interactive, a
communications and digital marketing firm that has worked with the
Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic Senatorial
Campaign Committee (DSCC).”
Their reasoning: “The government would
be expected to set premiums for the public option approximately 25
percent below market value for comparable private insurance plans.”
Remember - Mulgrew says he wants to save us money - by opposing Medicare for all.
Do you know who the UFT uses for its digital media?
Biggest donor to this dark money outfit … Blue Cross who runs Mulgrew fave Anthem.
=======
Can the city force us into medicare Adv? Senior Care would have to reach an extremely high dollar threshold for that to happen.
Some people are reading the judge as giving the OK for the city to offer no options and force us into MedAdv.
Here is an explanation of what the judge said.
Yes, we won the case, but of course the City can appeal.
Don’t
be confused by the terms “threshold” or “statutory cap”. They are
effectively irrelevant because the statutory cap which the City is not
obligated to exceed paying is $776 per person per month. Senior Care is
$191 per month per person so we are nowhere near the cap or threshold.
For now we are in the cat bird seat.
I feel catbird seat may be the optimistic view. What I do know is that I was expecting to start paying almost $400 starting April 1 and now I don't. And I blew that money at my birthday dinner last Thursday. Parteeeeee every month.
I'll get you my pretty, and your little dog too! ----Mulgrew threat to Retirees
Read between the lines and the wicked witch of 52 Broadway will get even with those opt-outers.
MULGREW JUST KILLED MAP!!! HE THINKS THIS WILL WIN HIM THE ELECTION!! NO WAY!! VOTE FOR UNITED FOR CHANGE!! ..... A Retiree in Florida
By the way -- this retiree has often been critical of me for being too left and would never vote for the left wing in a UFT election. Which shows the real threat to Unity from a center/left coalition that UFC is.
Actually I don't buy that he killed MAP -- I think he will work to kill off retirees behind the scenes to force everyone into MAP.
His statement calls for satirical treatment.
Satire Alert:
For Immediate Release – Thursday, March 3, 2022
UFT President Michael Mulgrew on NYC Medicare Advantage Plus Plan:
We
believe in the NYC Medicare Advantage Plus plan and the excellent range
of benefits it would have provided our retirees. However, the judge’s
recent decision will effectively eliminate the savings the plan would
have produced and that would have been re-invested in health benefits
for our members. That is because anyone with half a brain and the economic ability to opt-out would have done so but we expected those who did opt out to be gouged out of $191 a month and double to include spouses, almost 5K a year, for the same services they have been getting for free. Now that the bastard judge has screwed us we are dumping our support of MAP, a plan I just spent almost a year bragging about how I created it. But the judge did give me an out by telling the city if they don't even offer an opt out they can force everyone into the wonderful plan with silver sneakers. I will sit idly by and cheer - or more probably work behind the scenes - to make sure everyone is screwed.
While
the NYC Medicare Advantage Plus plan is sound, the program has suffered
from serious implementation problems and poor legal arguments,
particularly on the part of the city. Don't blame me; I only control the UFT and the MLC.
Now that I feel compelled to say this, I suppose Our
retirees deserve better. Given the judge’s order, the UFT is
withdrawing its support for starting the NYC Medicare Advantage Plus
plan on April 1, 2022, and will urge the Municipal Labor Committee to
suspend its efforts to begin the program until all the implementation
and legal issues are resolved. Then we will really screw the retirees, but at least that will happen after this UFT election is over and I can continue to gaslight and pull the wool over their eyes.
Yes, if this plan
was as good as I've pretended it was all these many months we would
simply keep it in place as an option and retirees would flock to it, but
no, not happening. As I write, the city's servers are crashing with all
the opt-out requests. Sorry for all the, how do I say it - tsuris?
We'll regroup and try to screw our awesome seniors better next time. (Geof, sorry bro, you're fired.) Peace out!
The real Mulgrew
We believe in the NYC Medicare
Advantage Plus plan and the excellent range of benefits it
would have provided our retirees. However, the judge’s
recent decision will effectively eliminate the savings the
plan would have produced and that would have been
re-invested in health benefits for our members.
As one retiree put it to me, if everyone opted out and paid the $191 a month, it would bring in $600 million. But they couldn't charge people without a flim flam.
I have read the decision and the way I read it is the city can go ahead
and have only 1 plan and that being the Medicare advantage plan and if
they did so that would be legally okay. They just can't charge a premium
if they give retirees a choice of plans. This to me is going to be the
worst of all worlds. I guess the question is what are the unions going
to do now to stop them.
Manhattan judge strikes down NYC's plan to force retired city workers to pay to keep insurance they were promised for life
The
judge said that while the city could offer the less expensive program,
it couldn't charge people to stay in the old program because they were
promised health benefits for life.
In his ruling, the judge said
the city "is permanently enjoined from passing along any costs of the
New York City retirees' current plan to the retirees."
"New York City cannot take away their health insurance in retirement.
They are allowed to keep the subsidy that the city has paid for the
last 40 years and keep their doctors and their medical care that they've
earned over their many years of service," Cohen said.
When CBS2 first broke the story, Kramer reported on the difficult choice faced by people like former NYCHA
employee Bill Shenton and his wife, Susan, who said they would be
forced to pay money they can ill-afford to stay in the old plan because
the new one would cover only a fraction of the medicine Susan takes for
chronic lung disease. One drug alone costs $130,000 a year.
"I
feel like it's a betrayal. We were told we'd have the same insurance
that we had when we were working and it would cover our family," Shenton
said.
"We are so grateful that we will not have to pay the $192
penalty every month, which we cannot afford," retiree Sarah Shapiro
said.
"Good, quality, free medical insurance is a human right for everyone," retiree Gloria Bram said.
The
retirees called on Mayor Adams not to appeal the judge's ruling, but
it's not clear what the city will do. A spokesman for the mayor said the
city is reviewing the decision and "evaluating our options."
In a surprise development, the United Federation of Teachers,
which had enthusiastically supported moving retirees to a new, cheaper
plan, withdrew its support for the move. Union President Michael Mulgrew
called on the Municipal Labor Council to suspend efforts to start the
new program until all implementation and legal issues are resolved.
Well this Unity Caucus attack on UFC over MulgrewCare didn't age well.
What a way to celebrate my 77th birthday and 12th year on Medicare. I still am not 100% sure I won't start paying an extra $400 a month (for me and my wife) starting April 1 to keep my seniorcare. Lots of legalese to wade through.
I'm going to spend the money anyway on Beef Wellington tonight at One if By Land, Two if By Sea.
This is not a slam dunk win for us. The judge offers the city the choice to offer no options and toss everyone into a medicare advantage plan. So if they can't get $200 out of us now they can only save money but eliminating the opt out option. Adams may still do it and Mulgrew won't say boo.
So we may just yet be forced into a MEDAV without the choice other than to leave the senior care altogether and buy an AARP type plan for $200.
A real issue for me is the UFT/Mulgrew backing of privatized healthcare profit making slimebags in the healthcare industry while undermining public option of Medicare. But I'm not shocked at Unity backing naked unfettered capitalism.
That the unions are siding with profit making privatized healthcare over the public options.
They say they are saving money but are opposed to universal care which will be the money saver.
They
are contributing to the long-time decline of medicare which has to pay a
higher premium to MedAdv to cover higher admin costs.
Upcoding is harmful to our health and that is how they squeeze more money out of Medicare.
Expect Mulgew and Unity hacks to declare this a victory for them after attacking the people filing the suit for months. "We intended this all the time."
While happy at the possibilities of victory, it may not be a total one as city and union may still have options. I'm also looking at spin from our side too.
From the decision:
...states unequivocally that “[t]he City will pay the entire cost of health insurance coverage for city
employees, city retirees and their dependents, not to exceed one hundred percent of the full cost
of H.I.P.-H.M.O. on a category basis.
2
” Respondent and nominal respondent aver that the
definition of “health insurance coverage”, as defined in Admin. Code§ 12-126 (a), stating “a
program” as opposed to “any program” means that the City of New York need only pay for the
entire cost of one program. This Court respectfully disagrees. NYC Admin. Code § 12-126
(b)(1) is simply unequivocal and does not use terms like “provide” or “offer”; rather it uses the
term will pay and it provides parameters of such payment. The definition in NYC Admin. Code
§ 12-126 (a)(iv) simply provides what constitutes a program or plan that the City of New York is
required by law to pay for, by defining the contents of such a plan. This Court holds that this is
the only reasonable way of interpreting this section.
Of course, none of this is to say that the respondent must give retirees an option of plans,
nor that if the plan goes above the threshold discussed in NYC Admin. Code § 12-126 (b)(1) that
the respondent could not pass along the cost above the threshold to the retiree; only that if there
is to be an option of more than one plan, that the respondent may not pass any cost of the prior
plan to the retirees, as it is the Court’s understanding that the threshold is not crossed by the cost
of the retirees’ current health insurance plan. This is buoyed by the fact that the current plan has
been paid for by the respondent in full to this point.
A wise sage says:
As
I read this, the city if it gives a choice, must pay for it fully
unless it costs more than HIP. If they take the choice away and truly
throw all retirees into MAP, that would be a bad political move for
unions.
Here is Daily News -- called us David -- funny but talks about city but not getting screwed by union. After all, if unions didn't agree there would be no deal.
Judge rules Adams admin cannot financially penalize NYC retirees who reject controversial Medicare plan
A Manhattan judge ruled Thursday that Mayor Adams’ administration
cannot slap a financial penalty on retired municipal workers who opt out
of the city’s controversial new Medicare plan, marking a significant
win for a group of retirees who fought the health insurance switch in
court for months.
The effort by the administration to levy a $191 monthly fee on retirees
who want to keep their current coverage instead of enrolling in the new
Medicare Advantage Plan runs counter to longstanding local
administrative law, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lyle Frank wrote in a
decision.
The law in question, Frank continued, requires the city to “pay the
entire cost of health insurance coverage for city employees, city
retirees and their dependents.” Any attempt to impose a premium or other
cost for coverage is thereby illegal, he added.
“This Court holds that this is the only reasonable way of interpreting this section,” the judge wrote.
Frank’s decision caps a court battle between the city and a group of
retired city workers that began last year under former Mayor Bill de
Blasio’s administration.
In announcing the plan last fall, de Blasio’s administration presented
Medicare Advantage as a boon to the city and save taxpayers hundreds of
millions of dollars every year because it is subsidized by the federal
government at a higher rate. At the same time, the administration
maintained the new plan would provide the city’s roughly 250,000
Medicare-aged retirees with health coverage that’s comparable to what
they’re currently receiving.
But the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees sued over the move,
charging that the new plan would result in inferior coverage, including
by imposing complex new preauthorization procedures for specific
medical procedures.
After vowing on the campaign trail to make sure the new Medicare plan
wouldn’t be a “bait and switch” for retired workers, Adams announced last month that he would move ahead with implementing it as envisioned by de Blasio, angering retirees who said he was going back on his promise by keeping the $191 penalty intact.
Retired New York City municipal workers are pictured marching near
Brooklyn Borough Hall to call on Mayor-elect Adams to preserve their
Medicare coverage last December. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)
A spokesman for Adams did not immediately return a request for comment after Frank’s ruling.
Steve Cohen, a lawyer for the NYC Organization of Public Service
Retirees, said the judge’s order validates the concerns of his clients
and amounts to an “incredible victory” for them.
“The city got greedy, and held a sword over the head of retirees and
said, ‘If you don’t accept your new plan, we’re not going to pay for
your health care,’” Cohen said. “The judge saw right through that and
said, ‘No way, you can’t do that.’”
According to data reviewed by the Daily News, more than 45,000 retired
city workers had opted out of Medicare Advantage Plan as of mid-February
despite the now-rescinded financial penalty they would face.
The Adams administration can still offer the Advantage plan to retirees
on a voluntary basis, starting April 1, under Frank’s ruling. It was
not immediately clear Thursday afternoon how the administration will
proceed.
Here is the presser announcement going on now.
NYC Municipal Retirees to Celebrate Court Victory on Healthcare Coverage
Scores of retirees will gather near City Hall at 2:00 p.m. today
(3-3-22) to celebrate a court ruling that will let them keep their
health benefits without paying punishing premiums.
In
a David-over-Goliath victory, a Manhattan judge ruled this morning
against the city's plan to move a quarter-million retirees off their
current coverage, traditional Medicare and a supplement, into a
controversial new Medicare Advantage plan.
A
retiree group had sued the city, saying the proposed plan would limit
their access to doctors and services. Today Justice Lyle E. Frank of
state supreme court in Manhattan prohibited the city from imposing stiff
new premiums, $191 per covered person, on retirees wishing to opt out
of the premium-free new plan. Roughly 47,000 retirees and dependents
have already opted out despite the proposed penalty, which will no
longer be imposed.
The city can still
implement its new Medicare Advantage plan on April 1, with many retirees
expected to be enrolled in it -- not necessarily with their active
consent -- but the ruling gives them three months to switch out of it.
Lawyers for the retiree groups will address the rally this afternoon to give more details.
Biden's speech almost as long as Mulgrew DA President reports.
AFT’s Weingarten on President State of the Union Address.... [SATIRE WARNING]
...he
made the case against the threat posed by autocrats and those who
excuse them, both here and abroad. Democracy and freedom are worth
fighting for—as the Ukrainian people are showing us every day.
How we wish the autocrats in Unity Caucus would show the same spine as the Ukranian President who does not wear people out with long filibustering speeches.
