NYC Organization Of Civil Service Retirees Thanks Comptroller Lander For Rejection Of Aetna Medicare Advantage Contract

New York City Retiree’s Response to Comptroller Lander Refusing to Register the Aetna Medicare Advantage Contract

Retirees are thankful to Comptroller Lander New York, NY, June 9, 2023 — Comptroller Brad Lander announced he would not register the Aetna Medicare Advantage Contract. The New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees appreciates Comptroller Lander’s refusal to register the contract and citing many of the same findings we are aware of.

As he noted in his statement, and as we argue in our lawsuit, the plan suffers from serious legal infirmities and will cause untold suffering to hundreds of thousands of senior citizens and disabled first responders. Now, we hope the Mayor will do the right thing and permit retirees to stay in Senior Care.

The NYC Health Program was founded in choice; that is, it was the employees’ choice of what plan they wanted and it was based on their needs and doctors. Promises were made to these retired civil servants and they should be honored. If the Mayor would have agreed to any of our millions of requests to meet over the last two years, he would have heard the REAL truth, cited and sourced, and could have saved the City millions of dollars and not caused the Retirees stress, angst, and anxiety.

Our calendar is still open for him. Thank you, Comptroller Lander.

Banner Image: Worker. Image Credit – Jeriden Villegas

Marianne Pizzitola NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees

On August 13th, 2021, a group of retirees from many different city agencies got together to form an organization to fight the impending changes to our healthcare. Two and half hours later, five people volunteered to form the Board and one became an advisor to the Board. In the next few weeks, we grew to five officers, four Trustees, five Advisors, started our Facebook group, filed for NYS incorporation, opened our PayPal fundraising account and were approved by the State to conduct business. Six weeks later we met our initial fundraising goal to pay the attorney's retainer and had filed our article 78 petition. Our Facebook page has over 18,000 members and we have an email list of almost 10,000 and both continue to grow. This is a major accomplishment! But we need to grow larger. We need to reach 250,000 retirees!