RETIREES TO ERIC: KO MED PLAN
‘Why is it we’re being forced onto it?’ asks an injured ex-cop
Retired city workers are pleading with Mayor Adams to rescind his predecessor’s attempt to move them on to a new Medicare plan amid revelations that the switchover could financially burden not only them but also spouses of first responders who died in the line of duty.
As first reported by the Daily News on Sunday, the Medicare shakeup, initiated by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration last fall, is resulting in elderly widows and widowers of first responders being told by the city that they’ll have to pay the same monthly $191 penalty as retirees if they want to stay on their current coverage instead of enrolling in the new plan.
That’s in spite of a law passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks requiring the city to offer free health insurance for life to line-of-duty spouses.
Municipal retirees — many of whom were already opposed to the de Blasio administration’s so-called Medicare Advantage proposal out of fear it would water down their coverage — say the ripple effect on line-of-duty spouses is unconscionable and must be an impetus for Adams to block the plan.
“I need him to understand that the city can’t just shove something down people’s throats like this and tell them that they have to pay if they don’t fall in line,” said Shawnee Powell-Phillips, a retired NYPD detective who suffered a line-of-duty injury and wants to stay on her current coverage because she fears the Medicare Advantage plan will restrict access to certain medical procedures. “I trust my plan and I don’t want to change it. If this plan is so great, why is it that you’re forcing us onto it?”
More than 100 other city retirees from a variety of agencies have sent emails to Adams’ office making similar points as Powell-Phillips in recent days, according to correspondences shared with The News by the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees.
“I believe that you are a man of integrity and character and I’m asking you to do the right thing and please stop this travesty from happening to the retirees and let us live out the rest of our lives in peace,” Joanne MacDonald, a retired city nurse, wrote in one such email to Adams.
Marianne Pizzitola, president of the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, said they are bombarding Adams with messages because they’re concerned about his silence.
“They see he’s not listening. That’s why people are getting frustrated. He has the power to end this, modify it, fix it, but he’s not giving us his time of day,” said Pizzitola, a retired FDNY emergency medical technician who has asked Adams to meet with her about the issue for months to no avail.
Adams, a retired NYPD captain who is himself relying on municipal health benefits, has not said how he plans to deal with the convoluted Medicare Advantage rollover, though he told reporters last year that he wanted to make sure the new plan isn’t “a bait and switch.” As mayor, he has the power to modify or even outright scrap the de Blasio administration’s plan.
Stefan Ringel, a spokesman for Adams, said only that City Hall is “actively reviewing” the issue when asked late Monday about the repercussions for line-of-duty spouses.
Last year, the de Blasio administration presented the Medicare Advantage plan as a boon for city taxpayers in that it would save them $500 million a year due a larger chunk of federal funding without tinkering with health coverage for the city’s roughly 250,000 Medicare-eligible retirees.
But the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees filed a lawsuit charging that the new plan would mess with their health coverage by, among other things, instituting preauthorization processes for dozens of medical procedures.
The lawsuit prompted a Manhattan court to push back an opt-out deadline for the Medicare Advantage plan until April after de Blasio’s administration at first wanted it set for this past November.
That means Adams has until April to decide what to do about the plan, but Steve Cohen, an attorney for the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, urged the mayor to pull the plug on it sooner rather than later.
“We humbly request that you terminate it now,” Cohen wrote in a Monday letter to Adams. “You will be hailed as a hero by hundreds of thousands of elderly and disabled former first responders, public service retirees, and their widows and dependents.”