NYC Retirees Reach $53M Co-Pay Settlement with the City of New York
- 59 minutes ago
- 2 min read
By Joe Maniscalco
New York City municipal retirees are getting back the co-pays they were charged in 2022 to see their doctors.
According the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees [NYCOPSR], the City and Emblem health have agreed to a $53 million settlement—closing out an outstanding class action lawsuit NYCOPSR and a number of other plaintiffs brought on behalf of more than 250,000 elderly and disabled retired City workers enrolled in EmblemHealth’s GHI Senior Care Plan.
NYCOPSR President Marianne Pizzitola called the settlement covering medical visits made between January 1, 2022 through January 31, 2023 a “wonderful victory for retirees.”
“The older people get, the more likely they are to need medical care, and co-pays are one of the worst, most regressive burdens making healthcare unaffordable,” Pizzitola said in a statement. “We hope Mayor [Zohran] Mamdani and City Council Speaker [Julie] Menin recognize this and roll back co-pays.”
NYCOPSR last year successfully helped force former Mayor Eric Adams to abandon his efforts to strip municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare benefits and push them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan. But the hard-pressed retirees were still being charged co-pays at the doctor’s office.
As part of the $53 million dollar settlement, the City and EmblemHealth also agreed not to increase the still existing $15 Senior co-pays through at least the end of next year.
“Retired City workers have proven once again that they will fight relentlessly, and successfully, to protect their healthcare rights, which have been under constant attack for the past five years,” Jacob Gardener, one of the lead attorneys from Walden Haran Williams LLP representing retirees, said in a statement.
The lawsuit, according to NYCOPSR, also saved municipal retirees roughly $106 million through a temporary injunction which halted co-pays for two years.
To date, the organization says it has saved municipal retirees approximately $3.16 billion. That figure includes stopping the City of New York from forcing retirees to pay for their Senior Care to the tune of $600 million annually, preventing New York City and EmblemHealth from charging retirees additional co-pays in 2023 and 2024—another $106 million—and this latest $53 million class action settlement.
“It is another step forward in ensuring affordable healthcare for our seniors,” Steve Cohen, the other lead attorney from Pollock Cohen LLP representing retirees said in a statement. “Now we have to get the City Council and the Mayor to eliminate co-pays for seniors entirely. They were promised and deserve free healthcare in retirement.”
Mayor Mamdani has yet to communicate with Pizzitola, however, and does not support Intro. 1096—legislation from Council Member Chris Marte which would protect the benefits municipal retirees earned on the job by mandating that the City offer Medicare-eligible City retirees and their Medicare-eligible dependents at least one Medigap plan with benefits equivalent to or better than those available to City retirees and their dependents as of December 31, 2021.
Check out the settlement papers here.