NYC Retirees Protest with National Organizations Against Mayor Eric Adams Monday, September 30, 2024

September 29, 2024

MONDAY: New Yorkers Tell Mayor Adams, “Stop trying to take Medicare away from NYC retirees!”

Hundreds of Protestors to Demonstrate at City Hall and Aetna Offices

“Eric Adams may have just been indicted, but he lost our trust years ago when launched a costly legal battle to take away NYC retirees’ access to Medicare.”

Demonstrators will then march to Aetna CVS Health’s offices and stage street theater denouncing the insurance corporation’s profiteering at the expense of the health and lives of seniors and people with disabilities.

When/Where: Monday, September 30.

• Brief speaking program begins at 11:30am at City Hall Park near the Jacob Wrey Mold fountain.

• Protesters will march from City Hall to Spring Street Park where a demonstration and brief street theater stunt will take place at 1:30pm outside Aetna CVS Health’s One Soho Square offices.

Images: Hundreds of people are expected to participate in the protest, including seniors and healthcare professionals carrying signs with Mayor Adams’s face and messaging about deadly delays and denials of necessary healthcare by insurance corporations like Aetna CVS Health that run Medicare Advantage plans.

Speakers: NYC retirees personally affected by the Mayor’s push to force Medicare-eligible retirees into Medicare Advantage plans; healthcare workers; and family members of people who have been harmed by insurance company greed that delays and denies life-saving healthcare.

Context: Since 2021, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and his administration have been fighting a costly legal battle to push public retirees including teachers, police officers, sanitation workers, 9/11 first responders and other public servants onto privatized Medicare Advantage plans and strip away their access to Medicare benefits. The city’s plan has been rejected by the courts multiple times, and yet the Mayor continues to pursue the plan to hand over retiree healthcare benefits to profit-driven insurance corporations. Adams is specifically pursuing a contract with Aetna CVS Health, even though the switch to Medicare Advantage would benefit Adams and for-profit insurance companies but would not save the City a dime.

Recent investigations have found that the largest insurers in Medicare Advantage have committed widespread fraud and denied patients critical care they were supposed to provide by law; More broadly, they limit provider networks, delay care, and routinely deny claims in order to turn massive profits at the expense of retirees’ health.

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September 30, 2024

Major Eric Adams

Office of the Mayor

City Hall

New York, NY 10007

Major Adams:

For the last three years, your administration has fought to strip New York City’s public service withdrawals of their promised Medicare benefits. The teachers, police officers, fire fighters, sanitation workers, engineers, 9/11 first responders, and all public servants who dedicated their careers to making New York City the greatest city on the planet deserve the retirement benefits they were promised over the course of decades. Your relentless campaign to strip withdrawals of these benefits is not only an insult to their service, but it has continuously been ruled as illegal. Your ongoing efforts to force withdrawals into a Medicare disAdvantage plan is a drain on City resources and is a shameful dereliction of your duty to serve and protect all New Yorkers. Therefore, we demand that you:

1. Stop forcing withdrawals into Aetna’s Medicare Advantage plan by immediately withdrawing your appeal in Bentkowski v. The City of New York.

2. Commit to honoring the promise made to retire by ensuring affordable access to a traditional Medicare plan with supplemental (MediGap) coverage.

3. Commit to not increasing the cost of health benefits to public service retirees by withdrawing your appeal in NYC Org. of Pub. Serv. Retirees, Inc. v Campion.

4. I immediately rescind the recent decision to charge a $15 copay for each interaction with the healthcare system.

5. Hold a public town hall meeting with retirees to hear retirees’ concerns and engage in a good faith discussion about the future of their promised benefits.

6. Publicly state your support for a resolution in the City Council to never strip withdrawals of their promised benefits, specifically by ensuring access to Traditional Medicare with a supplemental plan.

7. Publicly state your support for Senate Bill 8388 / Assembly Bill 7866, which would prohibit public employers from diminishing health benefits for retirees by forcing them into the privatized so-called “Medicare Advantage” plans.

8. Publicly state your support for federal legislation that would expand Traditional Medicare to cover vision, hearing and dental benefits, add a cap on out of pocket expenses to beneficiaries, reduce Part B premiums and recover overpayments to insurance companies offering Medicare disAdvantage plans.

9. Publicly state your support for federal legislation that would remove the word “Medicare” from the name of Part C plans.

It is time for your administration to make good on the promises made to the public servants who worked for The City of New York!

Sincerely,

Be A Hero

New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees

Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition

Citizen Action of NY
New York Progressive Action Network

Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee (CROC NY)

Physicians for a National Health Program

Physicians for a National Health Program – NY Metro

Center for Health and Democracy

Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action

People’s Action

Aetna CVS Health September 30th, 2024

1 Soho Square

New York, NY, 10013

Re: Egregious behavior by your corporation and immediate request for a meeting

Dear Karen Lynch:

We write to you on behalf of Physicians for a National Health Program – NY Metro, New York Progressive Action Network, Cross-union Retirees Organizing Committee, NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, Citizen Action NY, Be A Hero, Northwest Bronx Community Clergy and Coalition, New York Statewide Senior Action Network, Radical Elders, and ACT UP New York. We are a growing group of organizations and individuals in New York that are incredibly concerned about the increased profiteering of American healthcare by your corporation – especially via the Medicare Advantage (MA) program. Using the MA program, insurance corporations are not only overbilling US taxpayers by up to $140 billion each yearbut you are also carrying out severe harms based on your practices – all while you pocket billions of dollars in profits each quarter.

The MA program was sold as a way to cut costs, increase choice, and improve health outcomes: in practice, it has demonstrably achieved the opposite of each of those stated goals. MedPAC consistently highlights the absence of meaningful data supporting claims of improvement; In fact, the Journal of Clinical Oncology released a study in 2022 outlining the adverse outcome for cancer patients on Medicare Advantage. Limited networks do exactly what they are designed to do: reduces the amount of choice available to patients. The large quantity of beneficiaries that choose to sign up for an MA plan (a fact which insurance corporations love to point to as evidence of their quality of care) is in reality rarely a choice at all: lower-income people cannot afford to pay for the Medicare supplement plans that wealthier Medicare beneficiaries overwhelmingly prefer. Furthermore, cities and companies are choosing to shift their retirees to privatized MA plans to cut costs – to the dismay of employees who have been promised Traditional Medicare plus Medigap.

Private health insurance corporations denied legitimate claims 18% of the time in MA. For privatized Medicaid, private health insurance corporations denied claims up to 41% of the time. Medical debt is such a problem that the Biden administration announced a proposal to eliminate medical debt from credit reports. The increasing prevalence of prior authorization is seen as a “medical roadblock,” and is being met with growing scrutiny by the general public.

In New York City in particular, public service retirees are dismayed at Aetna CVS Health’s negotiations with Mayor Eric Adams to force retirees onto privatized, for-profit MA plans. For decades, New York City public retirees, including teachers, police officers, sanitation workers, 9/11 first responders and other public servants have been promised healthcare benefits through the trusted Medicare program with a Medigap supplement. This combination is something many have come to rely on, and the unwelcome shift will not only interrupt their current access to care and doctor-patient relationships, but also betrays their decades of service.

Aetna CVS Health’s profiteering of the healthcare of America’s most vulnerable populations is not only shameful, but it is killing people. We demand your corporation take the following steps to remedy the situation:

• Withdraw from Medicare Advantage contract negotiations with the City of New York

• Stop the overbilling of Medicare via the Medicare Advantage program

• Stop the overbilling of state Medicaid plans by corporate managed care

• Stop delaying and denying medical claims. Let doctors make decisions about their patients’ healthcare—not insurance company staffers

• Fraudulent payback overpayments to the Medicare Trust Fund

• Overturn existing denials for treatments supported and recommended by medical professionals and traditional Medicare and state Medicaid plans

• Do not use Artificial Intelligence to evaluate and deny claims

New Yorkers are beyond aggrieved by the way you use our health as a cash cow. We demand your timely response through an agreement to meet with us in-person within the next three months to respond to these concerns and negotiate an in-writing explanation of changes you will make including reversing the specific care and claim denials in the cases we will bring to you in an in-person meeting.

Sincerely,

ACT UP New York

Be A Hero

Citizen Action NY

Cross-union Retirees Organizing Committee

New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees

New York Progressive Action Network

New York Statewide Senior Action Network

Northwest Bronx Community Clergy and Coalition

Physicians for a National Health Program – NY Metro

Radical Elders