Copy and paste the text below into an email for your retired UFT colleagues, family, and friends.
Dear _____________________,
Your Vote In The Upcoming UFT Election Might Mean Life Or Death!!
Every three years the UFT retirees get to elect our chapter leader just like the active union members. In mid-May, retirees will be receiving a ballot in the mail. Don’t throw it away. This year vote for your life!!
For 58 years New York City promised employees and retirees that when they retired, and for the rest of their lives, they would have a choice of premium-free health care, including the most popular choice – traditional Medicare + medigap insurance to pay the 20% that Medicare does not pay.
Up until now, our union always fought to keep this promise to its retirees. But… in 2014 the union made a secret deal with the Mayor to save millions of dollars for the city on health care. They added copays and limited hospital networks for active workers …
But the biggest part of the deal was to stop the city from having to pay for GHI Senior care Medi-gap insurance for all retired municipal workers.
They agreed to force retirees out of our current Medicare & supplemental health care, and into a cheaper, for-profit Aetna Medicare Dis-Advantage plan; a plan that has limited doctors and hospitals, pre-authorizations, and denials of service. If you doubt what this means for us, watch this powerful NY Times video about Big Insurance's profit-making model of using prior authorizations to delay and deny medical care.
Many of our doctors, hospitals, and continuing care retirement communities won’t accept this plan.
It is only because a group of retirees organized the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, raised money, hired a lawyer, and successfully fought the city and the unions in court for three years to stop them, that the city hasn’t been able to do this to you.
But they are still trying, by appealing all the court decisions that have favored the retirees.
Tom Murphy, the UFT Retired Teachers Chapter leader, who will, once again be the Unity candidate, supports the Mayor and Michael Mulgrew's MLC deal to throw retirees under the healthcare bus. They have not allowed a retiree vote, and they won't allow retiree voices to speak against the for-profit Aetna plan, either at retiree chapter meetings, or in the union paper.
Now is the time to show the union and the mayor that UFT Retirees don’t want this deal.
When you receive your mail-in ballot, shortly after May 10th, don't throw it away.
Vote for the entire Retiree Advocate/UFT slate.
Retiree Advocate/UFT opposes the insane deal that takes away our Medicare Part B reimbursements and forces us into the privatized, for-profit, Aetna Dis-Advantage plan.
Retiree Advocate has hundreds of years of collective UFT experience. They are former chapter leaders, UFT Executive Board members, and UFT Vice Presidents. They spent their careers in schools and classrooms, not in UFT patronage offices. They will work for retirees, not for insurance companies. They will run the Retired Teachers Chapter like a real union chapter, not like a rubber stamp for City Hall.
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