Members of the group Cross-union Retirees Organizing Committee (CROC) showed up at Manhattan’s 26 Federal Plaza on April 12 to deliver a letter addressed to President Joe Biden to bring attention to the concerning direction they see Medicare going in.
CROC members are mostly New York City municipal retirees who said they wanted to deliver a letter to Medicare and Medicaid Services representatives about something they call a “(Dis)Advantage” plan, a play on Medcare’s Advantage plan terminology.
“We are mostly New York City retirees, and the city has been trying for three years to take away our wonderful Medicare,” said Julie Schwartzberg, a CROC founder who also once served as vice president of AFSCME District Council 37’s Local 768. “We found out that all over the country, the same thing is happening. In states all over the place, in cities, they’re taking away retirees’ Medicare and putting people on Medicare Advantage.”
“Medicare Advantage is profit-making. We don’t want it,” she added.
Security guards at the federal building refused entry to CROC representatives after the rally. The group was asked to mail in their letter and stand by for a response from Biden regarding their concerns.
CROC members have reacted to the changes in Medicare by helping to form the National Alliance for Retiree Health Care. They say they’ve been joined in this new national effort by retirees in Vermont, Delaware, California, Minnesota, Washington, and Tennessee who stand ready to unite nationally to fight against any tweaks to access to Medicare.
In their letter to the Center for Medicare Services and Biden, the national movement asks that instead of having Medicare privatized, there be more of an effort to expand it.
“We are an alliance of retiree organizations fighting for the expansion of our public Medicare benefits and against the ongoing privatization of traditional Medicare,” one portion of the letter reads. “We retirees served our communities for years, paid into Medicare every paycheck, and were promised strong public Medicare when we grew older.
“Now retirees all over the country are being forced into for-profit Medicare Advantage plans, without their consent. Many other seniors have chosen Medicare Advantage because they cannot afford expensive private Medigap plans or are deceived by false advertising.
“These plans are literally killing us. The National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that 10,000 Medicare Advantage patient lives could be saved every year if insurance companies did not delay and deny the care their doctor ordered as a method of increasing their profits.”
“Medicare (Dis)Advantage screws everyone”
“Through the years we always thought that the enemy was the Republicans who were against Social Security and––like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan––against Medicare,” Stuart Eber, Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations (COMRO) president, remarked during the stand-in. “Then we woke up in the 21st century and we have Democrats and Republicans who are foisting Medicare Advantage on us.”
Eileen Moran, a member of the Professional Staff Congress’ (PSC) retiree executive committee said that because it’s propelled by the need to make a profit, she believes “Medicare (Dis)Advantage screws everyone.”
“The PSC Social Safety Net early on was skeptical of the agreement that the [Municipal Labor Committee] made with the city both in 2014 and then again in 2018, because there was no way that you could save $600 million a year every year without denying care. But that’s the route that the MLC and the city took. And that’s why we’re here because we’re urging Biden to make sure that regular Medicare is protected––real Medicare, not Medicare (Dis)advantage. And if we begin to claw back that $140 billion that’s being wasted going into corporate executive salaries and advertising to lie to people, then we could actually go without a Medigap policy, and we could expand Medicare to cover dental, eyeglasses, hearing aids, etc––all of which is not covered now. But instead, we’re flushing money down the toilet to make people in the 1% richer and richer and richer.”
Schwartzberg said CROC believes Medicare could be financially buttressed with the funds the federal government has won in lawsuits against the largest insurance companies who, according to Physicians for a National Health Program, overbill Medicare Advantage. Many of these companies have had to pay million-dollar fines for fraudulent and inflated bills, according to a 2022 congressional report. “We are saying, take that money that the insurance companies are robbing––and there’s an estimate that it is up to $140 billion a year––and put it into Medicare. Why does Medicare make us pay 20%? Why don’t they have dental? Why don’t they have optical? Why can’t we take the money from the fraud and …make Medicare whole? That’s why we’re here. That’s why we’re going up and delivering a letter to President Biden saying, this is what you can do.”