By the time Millennials in City Service retire the retiree health plan will be a box of expired bandaids thrown in a puddle in front of you as you exit on your last day.

The time has never been better to stop and reverse this. That's what these young workers were saying about their situation.

“This is a fight for working class people globally”: Caterpillar workers rank-and-file committee holds powerful meeting against sellout agreement

Maybe they can go on Medicare when they retire which is good enough for every other American.

It's completely unaffordable for NYC to pay any money for retirees Healthcare when almost no other American gets this Benifit. Something Ike 15% of NYCs budget goes to pay for employees that no longer work for the city. When people complain there is no money for parks and a lot of other things it's going to people that don't even work for the city anymore. It's not fiscally sound over the long term.

Ok Boomer.

Since you feel so strongly about this you should return any Social Security or Medicare payments or benefits you are offered when you actually retire. Because you don't deserve it and you didn't pay for it fully and nobody owes you anything. Is that right?

Isnt that the entire point of working for government. You dont get great pay but you get great benefits. You take away the great benefits then no one will want to work for city government.

Please this is the point you’re gonna make? As there arent a million other ways the city wastes money, healthcare for retired workers is whats’s eating all the funding? Thats why people go to work for the city. If the city didn’t offer this those parks would be even worse. You sound like a moron

Once they reach age 65(?) they do go on Medicare, this is about the medical insurance they get when they retire but before the become Medicare eligible. Once they become Medicare eligible this insurance will become secondary while Medicare will be their primary insurance.

Organized Labor moving forwards with this was probably an under-the-table part of the negotiations with DC37 on the labor contract. Those 3% raises had to come from somewhere - remember that the city went into negotiations with a starting line of 1.5%, and, that when the medicare advantage deal was first negotiated under DiBlasio it was expected to save the city $600M annually.

>The switch will provide some new benefits, such as routine hearing and vision exams, hearing aids, and mental health care provided via telemedicine.

These are not new benefits. They were already provided by medicare. The difference is that this aDvAntAgE pLaN requires pre-approval for certain benefits, which only serves to deny healthcare to people who would have had access under the medicare plan.

Im sorry to say, they offered it as a carrot to take the job, to go back on their word is beyond messed up its criminal. Offer the new contracts w the bs u propose at the very least.

Sometimes I really hate this country

long island has a viewpoint on nyc.

>a box of expired bandaids thrown in a puddle

"Our healthcare is a bottle of Malort?" -Chicago natives

It sounds like the union presidents of the uft and dc37 have complete control over the MLC considering they get 1 vote per 250 members and those 2 unions have way more members then any other union. That would suck to be in another union and to have your healthcare controlled by another union boss.

> It's not fiscally sound over the long term

Then they shouldn't have offered it to people who spent their lives working for the city to get that benefit.

The main benefits of a career in public service were pensions and healthcare. The older generation thought this social contract was sacrosanct.

Good luck maintaining city services.

Tier 6 plan sucks. Can’t work from home. Office space is crumbling with roaches, equipment outdated, your coworkers are unmotivated uninspired incompetents collecting paychecks waiting for retirement. Why work for the city?

Pro: You can’t get fired.

Hmm.. That’s actually a huge pro in a recession

The best case scenario I've heard in terms of being hired by the city is two months of bullshit, minimum. After that, you have to deal with low pay, terrible working conditions, constant bureaucratic bullshit over your pay and reimbursements, and then this shit.

Remind me again why literally anyone with options should work for New York City?

Amazing….

I love social security and Medicare. Why would I want to stop those Benifits. I don't think NYC needs to supplement those Benifits for people who retired from working for the city long ago. I would rather NYC use that money to fix the subway system or make the parks nicer.

Huh? There would be more money fir parks. Maybe the city would be able to pay more pay now to workers. At least the city is not deferring payment for work today to some time in the future. I would assume most people discount this benifet when applying for a job. If the job paid 10k more a year now vs cover the cost of retirees Healthcare which is already paid for by the feds NYC could attract more workers.

Yes and they stop offering it to new employees and raise there current salaries and stop creating a ticking time bomb if underfunded future Benifits.

Ad hominine. Do you have anything but a childish opinion.

I admire your psychotic optimism that the city would pay for bandaids.

Yeah the unions only care about boomers

The boomers made out like bandits. Younger generations are the ones getting fucked

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Actually dental vision and hearing is minimally covered by traditional medicare

This is very wrong and I believe the union leadership sold out its members. There is growing evidence that Medicare Advantage is a giveaway to the insurance industry. Under traditional Medicare, you can go to any doctor you want in the country, there is no pre-approval, and claims are usually not denied. Under Medicare Advantage, you are stuck in a "network", pre-approval is required to see a specialist, and there have been news reports of claims denials. There is growing evidence that Medicare Advantage is problematic. It is really not Medicare and a lot of people feel its a disadvantage

Maybe not brand name. A package of plastic adhesive bandages. One size.

NYC employees are paying into their pension and for those benefits. It's not a free gift from taxpayers (which city workers also are - tax payers).

I hear the DSNY just has the one bandaid leftover from the Koch administration that they have to share.

Thanks a lot UFT, sold out its members and the other unions. Why the combination of all the unions was allowed to happen is beyond me.

I feel sorry for the older generation that planned out their retirement with Medicare in mind, only to get stuck with bs Medicare advantage. At least allow them to keep it, and new retirees will have to deal with Medicare advantage. Unfair to change the rules after the fact.

Agreed

> At least allow them to keep it, and new retirees will have to deal with Medicare advantage. Unfair to change the rules after the fact.

But this attitude is what led to Tier 6 in the first place. The system is broken but continuing to fuck over the younger crowd is worse than spreading the misery.

I definitely agree selling out the new hires is not productive, but I am speaking of anyone that is currently employed (not retired), including senior staff. Those who are still employed have an option to leave. Those who are retired usually have limited options to work/ change careers.

As a millennial in City service, my retirement plan is to die in the climate wars

Yeah, agreed.

City is going to need the feds to step in and allow conscription to fill the vacancies city and state departments are seeing.

FWIW this is a thing in many parts of the world, and technically US law doesn't limit it to military (IIRC congress must approve). So it is plausible.

I just don't see how the hell anyone could make the rational choice to work for the city at this point. You're way underpaid relative to work load, and there's no real career future for you. Benefits are going to continue to be cut. You need to really hate yourself to do it.

What are these people moaning about? $150 annual deductible and max OOP of $1500 and no premiums is fantastic coverage. Hell of a lot more than most people who are stuck paying for their own coverage that's not covered by part A.

Some unions have better vision and dental than anything offered by Medicare. Had, anyway.

Honestly I’ll stick to being a bartender Atleast I enjoy it

This effects Boomers, too.

The money saved on retirees's benefits will offset the money lost on housing, feeding and providing care to migrants. Old people are paying for it. It doesn't seem fair...

Unions =legalized mafia

Let me play the world's smallest violin for their fat pensions

PSLF. That’s pretty much it for me.

To the folks who are thinking that city workers should pay for supplemental Medicare like private sector retirees, I would just point out that the offer of retiree health benefits to city employees was a major reason why many chose to enter city work, as opposed to working in the private sector where compensation tends to be higher. To retroactively change these benefits for retirees who already completed their service to the city, and who planned their retirement based on having these retiree health benefits available, is fundamentally unfair and may be considered against the law when this change is ultimately challenged in court. It would be like your private employer deciding to claw back their 6% contributions to your 401(k) after you have already retired.

Traditional Medicare does not provide this coverage. Vision and hearing were debated to be phased in in 2027. Your statements are inaccurate

Yup..As someone in the field that needs to tell people the pros and cons of selecting which, those being are getting screwed. They are limited to a network of doctors, many screening that used to be covered will now need a prior authorization that can take months sometimes, medications will need prior authorizations, limited on which pharmacy and hospitals will accept them and if they need chemo...Good luck.

Corporate Lobbying = illegal cartels

Only boomers with fat pensions are government employees. 401K became the norm right as I graduated college in 1986.

Except your missing the part that 1) many of those ppl went into the career knowing that would be the future so the job chosen paid more thru the length of it so they could afford that cost at the end.

In this situation city workers took the job with a contractual promise that the health care was free which was why they were ok with taken less money for the duration of there career. You can't compare the example you gave. They literally waited till these ppl done worked there 20 30 years to then tear up contracts made to them. What job you rushing into when you over 50 to now supplement these changes.

2. The ppl that are paying what you talk about still end up with more control over there Healthcare decisions. In this plan you talking about pre authorizations for many aspects of Healthcare with a heavy incentive for the city to say no.

So now you get surprised with suddenly have to pay after you already old and retired and you get stuck getting lesser care with no other true options. The money you would of had you took less off because you were contractually told something completely different.

Don’t hate the country — hate the idiots who voted the city and union reps in!

Honestly I just hate the healthcare system. It’s disgusting that we don’t do better when we easily could.

How are they paying more? They still have the same coverage and other than possible pre-authorizations, the insurance switch to Aetna is lower out of pocket "The new plan will also offer some benefits that were not covered under SeniorCare. A side-by-side comparison between it and Aetna’s Medicare Advantage plan reveals that the new coverage has a lower annual deductible – $150 compared with $276 under SeniorCare. The Medicare Advantage deductible will also be waived during the 2023 calendar year.
The maximum amount that members can pay out of pocket for medical services in a given year is also limited to $1,500 under the Aetna plan, while there was no maximum under SeniorCare."

1. You gloss over the pre authorizations as thou the rejections to those are a free bag of chips. Aetna does not factor cost to patient when that happens. Medications that are also included and up for rejection are also not factored. All of these represent added cost that wasn't there previously to a group no longer working and on fixed budgets. Furthermore all of those cost fall on a group that you contractually made assurance to previous which in part was why the judge threw this out the last time.

If everything was going to be better and cheaper for the people then the city would not of needed to charge people either to keep there existing plan. But before debating me how about calling your own doctor as we have and asking them. After all it's there care and prescriptions they write that has to get covered. Then come back and respond. Don't even mean that in a negative way but perhaps your doctor telling you the answer would convince you faster then I ever can.

It's not about talking points. It's about the facts on the ground. When you have to go to your doctor and your doctor is telling you what won't be covered that's the bottom line. When you get to the pharmacy and something covered a previous day and suddenly not today all because of this that's the bottom line. Not some talking point they put on paper for lazy reading. Go actually see.

It's one thing if they did this for people who were actively working. While I think that would still be wrong contractually, at least your working still and could save for the changes and/or make changes with more runway in front of you before landing. But to do that after someone already put in the 20-30 years and now on a fix budget. And decisions were made based on said contractual agreement. I mean come on.

> Only boomers with fat pensions are government employees

Uhhh... we're talking about municipal retirees here....

Then you have to include Gen X, and every generation that comes after them as well. As government employee salaries go up, their pensions will go up as well.

they got rid of the mta employee at my local subway station and instead there's three cops looking bored and i have to flag them down to open the emergency exit for me so i can bring in my bicycle, that i use because transit so unreliable. meanwhile the city is projected to be $350+ million overbudget on PD overtime this year, make it make sense