NYC Retirees Press Statement regarding the NYS Delegation on 9/11 HealthCare Funding
New York, New York – Thursday, July 25, 2024– Today the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees received a press release from our NY Delegation regarding a new bill for 9/11 Health funding. We certainly applaud their support of funding healthcare for 9/11 responders, but they are all misguided.
We have been urgently asking for intervention for the last two years since NIOSH/CDC changed healthcare vendors to the new vendor,
Sedgwick Managed Care Providers (owned by the Carlyle Group) as they are not spending allocated funding to provide needed care. For example, Mike Lohrey waited about 4 months to be approved for lung testing and eventual double lung transplant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As-qcQsmxd0 .
He had trouble accessing care and medications every step of the way while struggling just to breathe. Other responders have no access to mental health because Sedgwick doesn’t have doctors in the network forcing responders to pay for those doctors out of pocket.
We receive calls daily about responders who are not given a choice of provider or any provider that accepts the Sedgwick plan. Sedgwick even removed their “find a provider tool” from their website, further proving there is no network of providers. Sedgwick is still getting their money from a large government contract, but the responders are not getting their much-needed care.
While we are allocating needed financial support for this very critical program, we need a network of providers to care for our first responders [with a] timely and responsible program vendor.
Sedwick does not return calls or emails in a timely fashion and sometimes not at all. In fact, sometimes, responders are put on the “Do not call list,” identified as a problem for complaining too much, and will only communicate with the responder via email – and they still don’t get a reply. This adds further stress and anxiety to an already struggling population.
As we near the next anniversary of 9/11, this is compounding the stress of our members. We urge the NY Delegation to address this issue immediately. While we respectfully honor those who lost their lives on or due to 9/11, we should also hold and support our survivors, and ensure they have the best care possible. Remember, 9/11 is more than a bumper sticker, so live up to your promise and help them now instead of only memorializing us when we die.
Banner Image: 9/11 Freedom Tower. Image Credit – Project 290
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!
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