Mulgrew’s new resolutions: an exercise in futility

It’s hard to figure out what the heck Mulgrew’s saying when he talks about Medicare. I’m not even sure he knows himself.  

I’ve only been able to keep up with the UFT’s shenanigans with retiree healthcare by following Arthur Goldstein over at Union Matters, who’s indefatigable and we all benefit from reading his detailed posts. Kudos also, of course, to Marianne Pizzitola for the lawsuits she and the NYC Retirees pushed through the courts. We’re obviously safer and less financially stressed than we would have been without their fortitude and skills.

Yesterday we got a letter from Mulgrew telling us that said he had motivated a resolution on the AFT floor to seek federal legislation to protect Medicare and see it would never be diminished. “Our members pay into Medicare and Social Security throughout their careers, and we cannot let opponents chip away at these programs.”

It’s obvious that everyone who has a job pays into Medicare and SS. You don’t have to be a member of a union to want to keep these programs going once you’ve paid into them all your working life. Where could he going with this? And why now?

Maybe the Resolution he attached would clarify his position, so here it is in full: 

The First of the four Resolved clauses calls for “improving ... our healthcare safety net, including ... Medicare.”  That’s where I start to lose him. Is Mulgrew wanting to improve Medicare itself, meaning “Traditional Medicare” – Title XVIII of the Social Security Act created in 1965, the foundation of senior healthcare arrangements for all enrollees nationwide? Fighting for Traditional Medicare has never been on the UFT agenda as far as I know. It’s hardly within its purview.  

Perhaps, Mulgrew’s conflating two very different things: Traditional Medicare (=TM) on the one hand, and a TM + a supplemental arrangement of some kind – a combo, as it were – that the unions do have some control over. One of these arrangements that adds to TM is Senior Care, others offered by the OLR are Advantage plans. These plans are additional to TM. The union negotiates them with private companies to pick up what TM does not pay for, and without them, the sickest of us would certainly go bankrupt. The graphic left shows the differences.

The UFT has neither protected or improved our safety net over the past few years, which is why those courageous retirees filed lawsuits to block what was being foisted upon us. And they won: the courts ruled against the changes, saying these proposed arrangements would indeed cause irrevocable harm.

So right here in this First resolved, I’m not sure I know what part of healthcare delivery Mulgrew is trying to protect and improve. Might be Traditional Medicare, but he might want to be protecting the whole shebang:  TM + one of the supplemental arrangements in the blue and green parts of the chart.

The Second resolution is practically meaningless. No candidate at the federal or state level is currently trying to find a real solution to preserve “high-quality and affordable benefits.” The only way to do that would be to change the tax structure and cut the ravenous middlemen corporations out altogether – those giant entities that have taken over the healthcare industries from top to bottom, eating up Medicare dollars. That solution would be Single Payer, and I don’t hear anyone talking much about it these days. 

Like the rest of us, legislators seem to be stuck with the current healthcare delivery system, dependent as they are on lobbyist moneys that have been thrown at them to keep them from making too many waves. 

REMEMBER:  Traditional Medicare leaves a lot of costs on the table. Medicaid picks those up for people with lower incomes, and the rich can afford to pay them out of pocket.  It’s the middle-income people like us who feel the changes – in our pocketbooks when premiums, deductibles and copays change, and physically, when services and drugs are denied. The UFT has always favored the status quo, which is TM + private supplemental arrangements. It has fiercely opposed Single Payer, thwarting all attempts to eliminate those profit-driven middlemen companies. 

As for the Third resolution:  there are no “simple solutions” to healthcare. (I don’t even understand what Mulgrew means by “simple solutions to necessary changes” – and I don’t think he knows either.) If by “earned benefits” he’s referring in part to Traditional Medicare, that program has in no way been entirely successful or comprehensive. So much is left to Wall Street and monopolistic private entities. Nor do I think Congress would ever actually get rid of Traditional Medicare.  Not everyone has a sugar daddy like Clarence Thomas to pay their mother’s bills.

Now for the Fourth, where Mulgrew says they’ll seek federal legislation to ensure that Medicare and SS won’t be diminished. Exactly what form will that “seeking” take? The AFT won’t find big solutions with the lobbyists. And even if they could all agree to tweak something somewhere somehow, Mulgrew’s basically saying that TM is pretty good – even though you need supplemental insurance to pick up that hefty hospital deductible and a ton of copays for lengthy hospital stays, a Part B deductible, copays and 20% coinsurance for outpatient services or equipment. The Part B deductible is out of pocket, unless you’re lucky enough to be in a union that reimburses you for it. Because that’s how Traditional Medicare works on its own, no supplemental coverage to pay these parts of it.  Part D is not even contained in Traditional Medicare. It’s all managed by private companies, getting funds from the government.

I do want all that to change.  I don’t want the premiums, deductibles, copays in TM. Is TM what Mulgrew and the AFT want to protect?  

I’m thinking not.  I’m thinking Mulgrew just conflates Traditional Medicare (Parts A and B on their own, no supplements) with the way the union delivers Medicare to us, which is TM + the private, for-profit “supplemental” plans that keep us from going bankrupt (Sr Care and the Advantage plans).   

If I’m correct, it means he favors a system where pieces of our benefits are controlled by industrialists who want to make money off of healthcare. That system most definitely will never be in our interest, and he shouldn’t be spending our dues money trying to shore those plutocrats up.