For two years, UFT retirees in Retiree Advocate/UFT, and our municipal-union allies, have been fighting to preserve our healthcare benefits, specifically our cost-free Medicare + supplemental GHI Senior Care plan. We’ve won a lot of battles in that fight – in court, in City Council, and in public opinion – but the fight isn’t over.
The MLC, led by UFT’s Unity leadership, has negotiated a catastrophically inferior, privatized, Medicare Advantage healthcare plan with CVS/Aetna. Our new healthcare choice is NO choice. And this time there is NO OPTING OUT of Medicare Advantage.
Goodbye trusted doctors. Goodbye entire hospital systems. Goodbye continuity of care. Hello prior authorizations and denials of service.
While Mulgrew’s team has been putting our physical and financial health at risk, grassroots retiree organizations have stepped up to do the real work of fighting City Hall; the work that Mulgrew will not do. Retiree Advocate/UFT has led the way, along with individual concerned UFT retirees, and other NYC municipal retirees. Together, we have protected our healthcare… up to this point.
Now, the Adams-Mulgrew team are slamming us with the most life-disrupting change to the health and wellness of UFT members that we have ever experienced. For some, it is a life-threatening change. And Mulgrew/Unity won’t give us a say in the UFT’s decision-making process. Mulgrew won’t let us vote on the most important quality of life issue that a retiree could face. The leadership bombards us with daily email sales pitches. UFT President Michael Mulgrew, Retired Teacher Chapter Leader Tom Murphy, and UFT Welfare Fund Director Geoff Sorkin talk down to us through PowerPoint slide shows. The CVS/Aetna sales team comes to our meetings to read us their scripts. Retirees should be listened too, not spoken down to, patronized, and ignored.
Let Retirees Vote!
Sign the petition to force a UFT referendum on significant healthcare changes.
Don’t listen to the hype. This healthcare fiasco came about because Michael Mulgrew mixed UFT health benefits in the 2014 negotiations, to pay for raises and retro payments. Instead of going to arbitration, he chose to sell off our healthcare. And he doubled down in 2018, agreeing to cut $600M a year from our health benefits. Six-hundred-million dollars a year… into eternity!
The situation is critical. For the past two years we have been fighting along with our retired municipal-union brothers and sisters to save our health benefits, save our money, and prevent the Office of Labor Relations, the Municipal Labor Committee, and sadly, UFT-Unity leadership’s own shameful plan to switch retirees into a Medicare Advantage program. Our allies in the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees have won every court battle so far. And we will continue fighting together.