A key municipal union committee has advanced a highly controversial plan to make Medicare Advantage the only insurance option available for the city’s retired workforce, setting the stage for a final vote next week, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The step, taken Thursday by the Municipal Labor Committee’s steering panel, allows the committee to hold a full vote March 9 to officially push through the proposed Aetna Medicare Advantage Plan — a measure that would make traditional Medicare effectively unavailable for the roughly 250,000 retired city workers as of Sept. 1.
Adams officials have for months been pushing for a Medicare Advantage option for retirees, citing hundreds of millions of dollars in potential savings annually from the plan at a time of rising health care costs and fiscal uncertainty for the city government.
Retirees charge that Advantage benefits are inferior to traditional Medicare.
The administration initially wanted to offer retirees both plans, with those opting for traditional Medicare paying a premium. But that plan ran afoul of local law, and was blocked by several judges.
The administration has signaled for months that if the City Council did not change that underlying law to make its two-tiered coverage system legal, it would move ahead with the more drastic measure of eliminating all other options besides Mayor Adams’ preferred Advantage plan.
The City Council has resisted Adams’ demand for a law amendment, and Marianne Pizzitola, president of the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, said she’s been on pins and needles for weeks waiting on this development.
“I had a bad feeling this was going to happen,” said Pizzitola, a retired FDNY EMS whose group was behind the lawsuit that got the city’s first Medicare Advantage Plan blocked.
Pizzitola’s grassroots group is likely to challenge the latest iteration of the proposal in court, she said.
“We need to wait and see how they will do this,” she said….
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