NEW YORK CITY—Over 100 workers demonstrated recently after it was revealed that Medicare of over 200,000 retired New York City (NYC) workers will be privatized. This new plan was struck by union misleaders and liberal Democratic Party politicians to make up a shortfall in the medical “stabilization fund” for current and retired workers. Demonstrating workers instead demanded that all workers and retirees not be moved into privatization until all retirees and workers are involved in the process. The demonstration was called by the Retiree Advocates/United Federation of Teachers, with retirees from the DC-37 Retiree Association, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) and other retiree groups joining with them to protest the privatization of our Medicare health care.
Communists in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have been in the thick of the fight from various unions. It was PL’ers who first exposed that the union misleaders and politicians have been secretly planning this racist scheme for over three years, and it’s PL’ers who are struggling to broaden this fight into class war to guarantee healthcare the only way we can: by smashing capitalism with communist revolution.
Capitalist racist “advantage”= death
The bosses’ plan is this: $600 billion will be saved each year by making us go through one private company to get Medicare. They will supposedly save money even though the companies who we must go through take out 12-18 percent of every dollar for administrative fees. These fees pay for their profits and tremendous executive salaries. These Medicare “Advantage” plans (originally called Medicare HMOs) will do this by restricting how retirees can get health care and where they get healthcare. Many doctors and health care providers, who accept Medicare do not accept Medicare Advantage. In addition, we believe we will ultimately have to go through gatekeepers for specialists and advanced testing and care. Denials are so frequent that over 70 percent of all the appeals are overturned. Another 5 percent were partially overturned (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, Medicare Advantage Appeal Outcomes and Audit Findings Raise Concerns About Service and Payment Denials, Sept. 2018 and Consumer Reports March 28,. 2019). Medicare Advantage plans: “deny preauthorization of services for beneficiaries, and payments to providers, in order to increase profits.” Unfortunately, these appeals take a long time and just waiting to see a specialist often results in death.
The union misleaders’ plans are racist as usual. They will increase racist inequality in that all city retired workers will have up to $1,500 in co-pays. Of the many city retirees who get pensions and Social Security that are extremely low, a disproportionate number are Black and Latin workers. This will cost one friend of PLP over 20  percent of her income.
Union misleaders and bosses: partners in crime
Why is the money needed? Under Democrats and Republicans, for decades, more and more tax breaks have been given to the rich at both the federal and state level. Democrat Andrew Cuomo proposed cuts in Medicaid during the Covid-19 crisis while the union misleaders snuck agreements into our contracts that promised to save money on healthcare by the workers paying for our last round of raises. Most of all, ALL recent U.S. presidents, including Jim Crow Joe Biden, have accelerated the build-up of the military to counter the growing power of the U.S.’s imperialist rival China.
The union misleaders have opposed single payer plans (Medicare for All) so they could tell us what great medical plans they get for us. UFT Unity caucus hack, Tom Murphy, boasted about stopping the NY State single payer plan at the last in-person retiree association meeting before Covid-19 shutdowns. Communists argue that unions must fight for all workers, not just their members. Furthermore, they should not support the capitalist medical system.
Many, many more people died during Covid-19 because they never had access to medical care before getting sick and were afraid to go get treated because they didn’t have health care. Many young Black and Latin workers died when they were admitted to hospitals because they hadn’t been given any diagnosis of conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes because of their lack of access to health care. This exposed the medical inequalities that exist under a capitalist system. We need to fight back against these racist and class-based inequalities.
State run health care systems have been and are continuing to be cut back all over the world; even in so-called liberal social democracies such as Sweden, Great Britain, and France. Hard won reforms are taken away when the capitalist class thinks people are not organized enough to fight back and when they need the money to invest elsewhere: Now they are investing in war. We must organize Progressive Labor Party to end capitalism and create a health care system that serves the entire working class. Only communist revolution can do that. Join us!