A Manhattan judge ruled Thursday that Mayor Adams’ administration cannot slap a financial penalty on retired municipal workers who opt out of the city’s controversial new Medicare plan, marking a major win for a group of retirees who fought the health insurance switch in court for months.
The effort by the administration to levy a $191 monthly fee on retirees who want to keep their current coverage instead of enrolling in the new Medicare Advantage Plan runs counter to longstanding local administrative law, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lyle Frank wrote in a decision.
The law in question, Frank continued, requires the city to “pay the entire cost of health insurance coverage for city employees, city retirees and their dependents.” Any attempt to impose a premium or other cost for coverage is thereby illegal, he ruled.
“This court holds that this is the only reasonable way of interpreting this section,” the judge wrote.
Frank’s decision caps a heated court battle between the city and a group of retired city workers that began last year under former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration.
In announcing the plan last fall, de Blasio’s administration presented Medicare Advantage as a fiscal boon that would save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars every year because it is subsidized by the federal government at a higher rate. At the same time, the administration maintained the new plan would provide the city’s roughly 250,000 Medicare-aged retirees with health coverage that’s comparable to what they’re currently receiving.
But the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, a group of ex-cops, firefighters and other retired workers, sued over the move, charging that the new plan would result in inferior coverage, including by imposing complex new preauthorization rules for specific medical procedures.
After vowing on the campaign trail to make sure the new plan wouldn’t be a “bait and switch” for retired workers, Adams announced last month that he would move ahead with implementing it as envisioned by de Blasio, angering retirees who said he was going back on his promise by keeping the $191 penalty in place.
2 comments:
Good news but there is more to this story.
Also I get sick of Americans talking about how great free European health care is.
I emigrated from Europe and I can tell you for a fact, being on a waiting list for 6 months to see a specialist is far from great. Having to wait months to start chemotherapy is far from great. Here in America I can walk into any medical facility and within a day or two I’m back in front of a specialist.
How great free European health care is.
Its shit, Medicaid even in the Bronx actually blows it away.
In most of Europe they don't treat serious diseases like Cancers, COPD etc.
No fancy equipment like we have here, very little numbers or respirators, PET scanners and the Scandinavian COVID death statistics were the highest on the planet to confirm this.
And if your single with no kids, with nobody to support you last to get an appointment, last on the cue. and you will never get a live saving early detection PET scan.
They kill most all the Alzheimer's people at 2nd stage
Send a social worker and nurse to the house to administer a dose of morphine to knock the patient out with a smile then a massive dose barbiturate to cause instant respiratory & cardiac arrest. The last breath is usually one violent single convulsion. They tell the family "the patient didn't feel that lets all hold hand now prey and sing"
I seen this ITS HORRIBLE !!!!
Id rather be shot or pushed out a window in New York.
That's why you see some of these these Scandinavians in American hospitals, certain experimental hospitals in Germany.
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