NYC warns active city workers may have to pay for health insurance if Medicare Advantage campaign fails [New York Daily News] – InsuranceNewsNet

Mayor Adams’ administration plans to impose health insurance premiums on active city employees if its controversial effort to transfer the city’s retired workforce to a privatized health insurance plan fails, the Daily News has learned.

Saddling up city workers with bonuses would break with decades of local government precedent. Nonetheless, Adams’ team threw him as a last resort in negotiations with the city’s labor committee over the Medicare Advantage plan, in which the team has long attempted to enroll retired city workers for medical reasons. savings, depending on Michael Mulgrewpresident of the United Federation of Teachers union and a leading member of the MLC.

“It would be an extraordinary change, and something we need to avoid,” said Mulgrew, who sent a letter to his members over the weekend warning them that the administration has raised the specter of indicting employees. from the city. $1,500 annual bonuses.

According to an internal health plan memo obtained by The News, the $1,500-the fee per worker would offset $600 million annual savings The Adams administration says the city would lose if the Advantage plan was not adopted.

An Advantage plan could guarantee such savings because, unlike traditional health insurance, it would be administered by a private provider, and Adam said the city needed cash to hedge against a looming budget shortfall. But a group of retired city workers successfully blocked the Advantage plan in court this spring after arguing it would dilute their health coverage.

The municipal workforce is made up of approximately 300,000 active members and 250,000 retirees. Both groups have been guaranteed premium-free health care since the early 1980s.

Despite legal setbacks, the Adams administration is pursuing two avenues to transition retirees to an Advantage plan, one of which relies on the action of the municipal Council and one on MLC support. If both efforts fail, the administration told the MLC, which serves as an umbrella group for the city’s various municipal unions, that it could adopt bonus-based plans for active workers to ensure fiscal savings. , Mulgrew said.

Adam spokesperson Jonas Allon would not comment on the specific contingencies under consideration, but said, “The city will need to achieve the necessary savings through other measures that will impact both active employees and retirees” if the Advantage push to two levels fails.

The first plank of the administration’s ultimate bid asks council to change a city law known as 12-126.

The reason is that a Manhattan Supreme Court Justice ruled in March that the city’s original Advantage plan violated 12-126 by offering to fine retirees $191 per month if they want to stay on traditional health insurance. By amending 12-126, Adams’ team argued that Advantage could proceed since the fine would no longer be illegal.

But as previously reported by The News, there is little appetite in the Council to make such an amendment. A Council source said on Monday that no member was yet willing to introduce a bill on the issue.

Therefore, Renee Campion, the Adams labor relations commissioner, told the MLC over the weekend that if the Board does not act on 12-126 by Friday, the administration will ask an arbitrator to strike out all of the retiree health plans, excluding Advantage. Campion argued that such a decision would be consistent with the Manhattan Supreme Court decision because there would be no financial penalty to speak of, as traditional health insurance would not even be an option for retirees.

“We have to move forward with the [Advantage] plan in any way possible,” Campion wrote in a letter to the MLC brass, adding that the city lacked $50 million savings for each month without Advantage.

However, the MLC will not agree to scrap all retiree plans except Advantage and could likely block such action, Mulgrew said. That leaves the threat of implementing a premium-based scheme for active workers while leaving retiree benefits largely untouched.

“Both alternatives are unacceptable,” Mulgrew wrote in his weekend letter to members. “We will not allow the city to divide retirees and serving members.”

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