Each year the NYCERS Actuary publishes a finacial report (2021) that anaylzes the City's future liabilities for other than pension benefits for city retirees. It's a pretty dry report but it is actually the most detailed description of retiree non-pension benefits, mostly health benefits and welfare fund payments. I have referred to this report in past Medicare Advantage scam postings but now I want to go into some of the details from the actuary's report. There is something about numbers that give you a different sense of the scam.
Now for the numbers for FY-2021:
- the number of city retirees = 243,978
- the amount the City put into the NYC Retiree Health Benefit Trust Fund = $3.200B
- the amount the City paid out for retiree health benefits = $2.784B
- the amount the City paid into the retirees welfare funds = $399.5M
The Monthly Health Insurance Costs
The Actuary states the following as the momthly imsurance premiums per retiree that the City pays to the insurance companies:
- HIP HMO
- Non-Medicare Single - $776.01
- Non-Medicar Family - $1,901.23
- Medicare - $181.58
- GHI/EBCBS
- Non-Medicare Single - $775.66
- Non-Medicar Family - $2,035.61
- Medicare - $194.14
- Other HMOs (without drug coverage)
- Non-Medicare Single - $1,160.34
- Non-Medicar Family - $2,701.42
- Medicare Single - $291.83
- Medicare Family - $576.92
Doing the arithmatic,
the annual cost for a GHI covered employee or pre-Medicare retirees's family health insurance is $24,427.32.
The annual cost of a GHI covered Medicare retiree is $2,329.68 plus $1,763.64 for the annual Medicare Part B premium refund.
Of cousre, the City is also targeting the Part B refund for elimination.
Distribution of Medicare retitrees over the city retirement systems.
This breakdown can be found on page 140 of the report. For some reason the Actuary uses a total population of 275,519 retirees when stating this breakdown. The key numbers are who's eleigible for Medicare with GHI and who is not. There are 157,381 Medicare eligible retirees with GHI coverage and 62,779 pre-Medicare retirees with GHI coverage.
The GHI pension fund breakown of the 157,381 is as follows
- NYCERS = 59,670
- TRS = 61,775
- BERS = 11,665
- Police = 15,507
- Fire = 7,339
- TIAA = 816
- LODW = 609
The HIP covered retirees breakdown is 22,404 for Medicare eligible and 9,169 for pre-Medicare. For some reason this group is not part of the Medicare Advantage scam. HIP is part of EmblemHealth as is GHI. I suspect there is undisclosed agreement covering HIP which the City/MLC does not want the public to know about. In fact, the retirees and also the workers have not seen a written and signed agreement between the City and the MLC. There is no list of which Locals have signed on to the Medicare Advantage scam. You can imagine a worker in his/her early 60's and looking at retirement and Medicare at age 65 becoming aware that his/her Local has just sold them out.
Pre-Medicare Retirees
None of the pre-Medicare retirees, which total 78,252, are being hit with Medicare Advantage scam as of now. They probably haven't even gotten notice of the scam yet. They won't get hit until they turn 65. Interesting figure: there are 31,527 police retirees in the pre-Medicare group.
The remaing 7,857 medicare eligible retirees, not in GHI or HIP, are in other health insurance plans. These retirees are being hammered the same way GHI covered retirees are.
There are also 12,155 retirees who have waived health insurance coverage.
Aetna and the City's Procurment Guidelines
One of the other plans is from Aetna and is a voluntary Medicare Advantage plan. Aetna has sued the City over improper procurment actions with respect to the award of the contract to EmblemHealth. The contract has yet to be registered with the Comptroller. In fact, it quite possible that the contract has not yet been signed or approved by Corp Counsel.
CMS Approval
It is safe to say that the new MAP plan has not yet gotten approval from CMS, the federal Medicare administrator. CMS will be the entitiy that will give money to EmblemHealth to run the MAP plan. I would love to see the application that EmblemHealth submits to CMS.
The Big Welfare Funds for Retirees
On pages 141 to 149 you can view a detailed list of all the RETIREE welfare funds, the number of retirees covered by the fund and the annual contribution to the fund by the City for each retiree. These figures do not reflect the contributions for current employees.
While these amounts add up to over $490M in FY-2022, the real money is paid for active employees at a total of almost $1.2B for FY-2022.
I'm only listing the larger funds here. The report has all the details.
- NYCERS
- Managerial Employees - 8,451 - $1,940
- Correction Captains ---1,901 - $1,590
- Correction Officers -- 9,585 - $1,740
- DC-37 ----------------- 37,391 - $1,940
- Staff Analysts --------- 2,560 - $1,740
- CWA -L#1180 ---------- 6,074 - $1,775
- TRansit - PBA --------- 1,271 - $1,853
- NYS Nurses Assoc. --- 4,294 - $1,740
- Sanitation Officers -- 2,366 - $1,290
- Teamsters L#237 ----- 7,276 - $1,085
- Sanitation Workers -- 6,936 - $2,009
- TRS
- UFT --------------------------------- 70,445 - $1,820
- Supervisors and Administrators - 7,536 - $1,820
- Professional Staff Congress ------ 2,081 - $1,965
- BERS
- DC-37 - 12,991 - $1,940
- Police
- DEA -------- 12,824 - $1,573
- PBA -------- 23,329 - $1,853
- LTBA -------- 4,014 - $1,665
- Capt. End. - 1,436 - $1,665
- SBS ---------- 7,949 - $1.740
- Fire
- Firefighters - 10,488 - $1,820
- Fire Officers - 4,819 - $1,695
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