Judge Declines to Pause New Health Insurance Plan for City Workers

A Manhattan Supreme Court judge on Thursday rejected a petition from a mysterious advocacy group to toss the city's new self-funded health plan for municipal workers, administered by EmblemHealth and UnitedHealthcare.

Judge Lyle Frank rejected the petition for a temporary restraining order from Hands Off NY Care, Inc. In the petition, city employee plaintiffs assert that the Adams administration's plan replaces their long-standing insured health coverage with an unlawful model. Frank set a court date for Dec. 1 to hear additional arguments in the case.

That means the health plan will continue toward its current bureaucratic hurdle: a review by city Comptroller Brad Lander, who has until Nov. 13 to decide whether to approve the contract providing premium-free health care for 750,000 active city workers and some retirees. The plan is slated to be implemented on Jan. 1 after it was approved by the city's unions in September; it is projected to save taxpayers an estimated $1 billion annually.

Hands Off NY Care board member Wanda Williams said the group looks forward "to presenting our full arguments to the court at our hearing on December 1."

"We are deeply concerned that the City is rushing to put through a new plan that removes key state-law protections for workers, retirees, and their dependents," added Williams. "This process has been conducted without transparency or meaningful input from the people it will affect. Our suit seeks to protect the more than 750,000 New Yorkers who depend on reliable health insurance."

City Hall spokesperson Liz Garcia said the Adams administration is "pleased to hear that the court has allowed the city's new health care plan to move forward at this time."

"We are confident that this new plan is the best choice for over one million employees, pre-Medicare retirees, retirees, and their dependents," added Garcia.

Hands Off NY Care is a self-described grassroots group launched in the late summer to oppose the plan. Last month, it filed the lawsuit on behalf of several city workers who argued the new self-funded plan threatened to strip away protections enshrined in state law.

In recent months, it has paid for a torrent of online ads slamming the deal as a "betrayal" of city workers; the group also paid for an LED truck parked outside Lander's lower Manhattan office encouraging him to reject the deal.

Hands Off NY Care, Inc. has not yet submitted disclosures to the state lobbying oversight agency, but it is represented by Global Strategy Group, a public relations firm that last year provided media outreach promoting a group leading the campaign against Gov. Kathy Hochul's controversial overhaul of the state's $9 billion home- care program.

Global Strategy Group did media outreach to amplify the Alliance to Protect Home Care, a self-described grassroots organization that was actually funded by industry leaders, which spent handsomely on ads opposing the overhaul and sued New York to delay the program's start date. (Global Strategy says it was independently forwarding information and sources and not working on behalf of or in partnership with the Alliance.) The Alliance spent more than $10 million in 2024 — the second-highest lobbying campaign in Albany last year, New York Focus reported.

Hands Off NY Care is represented in its lawsuit against the city by the firm Holwell Shuster & Goldberg LLP, a national firm that deals in health insurance litigations. The firm recently represented insurers American International Group Inc. and Chubb Ltd. in a case that successfully argued that CVS isn't entitled to insurance coverage for claims alleging it helped fuel the opioid crisis.

The source behind Hands Off's campaign to kill the city workers' health insurance deal is unknown. But the deal has at least one known opponent: Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, which last year filed its own suit against the city, UnitedHealthcare and EmblemHealth in Manhattan Supreme Court, in a case that was also assigned to Frank.

Anthem is the current sole provider of the health plan for city workers that will be replaced in the new deal with UnitedHealthcare and EmblemHealth.

Though Frank ruled against Anthem, the insurer's arguments — and Frank's exact order — are themselves a mystery: the entire case file is under seal.

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