Comptroller Lander refuses to register Mayor Adams’ Medicare Advantage contract for NYC retirees over legal concerns [New York Daily News]

New York Daily News, The (NY)

City Comptroller Brad Lander took the unusual step Thursday of refusing to register Mayor Adam’s plan to switch the city’s 250,000 retired workers into a privatized, cost-cutting version of Medicare.

In a statement, Lander said he’s using a rarely-invoked City Charter authority to reject a contract inked by Adams that’d let private health insurance giant Aetna administer a Medicare Advantage Plan for the city’s retired workforce. Lander said he’s doing so because he’s concerned about “the legality of this procurement” due to a pending lawsuit filed against Adams by a group of retired municipal workers who fear his Advantage plan would ruin their health care benefits.

“As a matter of public policy, beyond the scope of our office’s specific Charter responsibility for contract registration, I am seriously concerned about the privatization of Medicare plans, overbilling by insurance companies, and barriers to care under Medicare Advantage,” Lander added, echoing concerns from the retirees.

Walking out of City Hall Thursday afternoon, Adams only chuckled when asked by the Daily News for a response to Lander’s action. Kate Smart, a spokeswoman for Adams, said later that the mayor’s team was “reviewing the letter from the comptroller’s office, which we just received, and our next steps.”

Earlier in the day, Adams, who has clashed with the more left-leaning Lander on several recent occasions, mocked the comptroller during a press conference by impersonating his voice and calling him “the loudest person in the city.”

Lander’s Advantage move may end up being mostly symbolic, as the Charter gives a mayor the power to override a comptroller’s contract rejection.

Adams, who was blocked in court last year from implementing the first iteration of his Advantage plan, has forged ahead with pushing retirees into the privatized Medicare model because his administration believes it’d generate $600 million in annual city budget savings. The mayor and many city public sector union leaders have also argued Advantage would provide benefits for the retirees as rigorous as their current traditional Medicare coverage — an argument disputed by Lander.

In his Thursday statement, Lander cited recent studies about Advantage, which, unlike traditional Medicare, is administered by private insurance companies.

“Recent investigations identified extensive allegations of fraud, abuse, overbilling, and denials of medically necessary care at nine of the top 10 Medicare Advantage plans, including CVS Health, which owns Aetna,” the comptroller said, calling the findings “worrisome.”

Marianne Pizzitola, a retired FDNY emergency medical specialist who leads the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, said she appreciates Lander’s decision to not register Adams’ Aetna contract.

“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,” said Pizzitola, whose group is behind the latest Advantage-related lawsuit against Adams that’s pending in Manhattan Supreme Court.

The Pizzitola group’s suit, filed last month, is asking a judge to block Adams’ plan and order that the city be required to provide retired city workers with a premium-free traditional Medicare option. Such traditional plans are typically composed of the universal federal program, combined with a city-subsidized Medigap supplement.

Adams’ plan structure would eliminate traditional Medicare as an option and make Advantage the only premium-free coverage for retirees.

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Lyle Frank has asked Adams’ administration to file a formal response to the retiree group’s suit by June 16.