On Lynn Schulman’s Track Record

I’m a NYC retiree who lives in Lynn Schulman’s district. She’s doing nothing to keep seniors like me from losing our Original Medicare and Medigap supplemental health insurance coverage. And, she’s doing nothing to preserve the healthcare rights of 400,000 active NYC government employees for when they retire or become disabled.

These are benefits we earned through decades of dedicated service to the people of NYC. The Adams administration wants to take our benefits away and put us in substandard, corporate-run, profit-driven (dis) Advantage plans instead. We’re not having it.

NYC falsely advertised this as a $660M cost savings measure. Not true. The federal money the City hoped for will be about $406M, less than 0.38% of NYC’s proposed budget. However, the NYC Independent Budget Office points out that much of those “savings” will actually be going to union welfare benefit funds. These funds, which are supposed to cover hearing, vision and dental, aren’t monitored or audited, and there is nothing in place to prevent their misuse. The unions to receive these funds are rife with histories of fraud and corruption. The Aetna Advantage contract also requires the City to pay $15/mo for each enrollee, totaling $33M/yr. To sum up, NYC Comptroller Brad Lander estimates the actual savings may be as low $200M, or just 0.18% of the proposed $106B budget.

Why are they trying to take away our current medical benefits for such insignificant savings? At the same time, the City is refusing to hear our suggestions to save money on healthcare without harming retirees. It doesn’t make sense.

The summary above doesn’t include the costs the City is incurring in terms of resources and staff attorney time from four different lawsuits that were sparked by this ill-advised “cost-saving” move by Eric Adams, one of which is seeking $550M in reimbursements, legal fees and damages. The City is demonstrably in the process of losing each of these cases. Total costs to the City for these lawsuits have yet to be determined. As a member of the Budget Committee, one would think Lynn Schulman would be concerned.

Many NYC retirees are experiencing irreparable harm. In violation of Administrative Code 12-126, seniors were suddenly being charged thousands in copays they couldn’t afford. They’ve already retired to places where there are no doctors in the (dis) Advantage plans’ networks. What are they to do, in their 80’s and 90’s? Move out of their retirement homes because those facilities won’t accept their new insurance?

Lynn Schulman is also Chair of the Committee on Health and a member of the Committee on Aging. I’m told her life partner, an EMS lieutenant, died after being exposed during 9/11 at Ground Zero.

She should be leading a full court press to protect us. Instead, she’s exhibiting a total lack of compassion for former first responders and other NYC retirees.

She is refusing to meet with a group of her constituent NYC retirees in District 29. There are over 40 of us who have been asking to meet with her for months.

The recently formed NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees (for Benefit Preservation), that we belong to, with over 25,000 other members, and growing, has hired two political consulting firms who have tried to arrange a meeting between Schulman and the scores of NYC retirees who live in her district. I’ve been copied on some of those emails, and her staff simply don’t respond to them.

My personal experience this year has been weeks of leaving messages with no call backs, and getting no replies to multiple emails. It’s the same experience I had last year in April of 2022, the first time they tried to take our benefits away.

This April, Schulman ducked out a side entrance to avoid constituents after a City Council hearing. She could have taken that opportunity to talk to us, but didn’t.

She doesn’t go to events she claims she’ll be helping at, so one can’t engage her that way. I showed up. She wasn’t there. I even tried to engage her by making comments to posts on her Facebook page. They were removed without replies.

I later learned that was a violation of my First Amendment rights per the ACLU and NYCLU. The page is an official public forum that supports her functions as an elected government official. As such, reasonable comments to her posts shouldn’t be removed.

I finally got through to her legislative director, Kevin McLeer, who arranged for her to call me. During our phone call, Lynn Schulman stated the legislation we want her to push for, that would protect our Medigap coverage, violates the City Charter.

After asking her to send me the specific section of the Charter that applies, I sent her my email address. I made sure she personally has both my phone number and email address, as do three of her staff. I’ve yet to receive a reply. It’s been weeks.

Our team of lawyers, from two different firms, know of no law our proposed legislation would violate. Our amendment would actually save the taxpayers money by making our repeated lawsuits against the City unnecessary.

Ethan Felder, who is running against Lynn Schulman in the Democratic primary, and is an attorney in his own right, knows of no law our proposed legislation would violate either. He very willingly signed a pledge to pass the amendment to permanently protect our Original Medicare and Medigap supplemental insurance coverage. Lynn Schulman has repeatedly refused to sign that very same pledge.

When I asked her why she wouldn’t meet with her NYC retiree constituents, Lynn Schulman said she just didn’t “want to get beat up on.”

I don’t think ducking accountability is in her job description.

I suspect there are other reasons. First, if rumors are true, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams has threatened to withhold discretionary spending money from the district of any council member who supports our proposed legislation, and to remove them from their committee assignments. As a constituent, I’m wondering why our council members aren’t uniting to remove Speaker Adams over this.

Second, the unions are currently hiring people to make calls and go door-to-door to stump for Lynn Schulman and other council members they endorse. When Eric Adams runs again, he’ll want union support, too, which is one of the reasons why he’s pushing this. If Lynn Schulman tried to shepherd our amendment through the City Council, the unions might not get the welfare fund money, and Lynn Schulman wouldn’t get their support.

Lynn Schulman is not the kind of council member I want to supposedly “represent” me. We need elected officials who will speak truth to power.

The NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees (for Benefit Preservation) and Protect Traditional Public Medicare (PTPM) both support Ethan Felder for City Council. He truly cares about working people and senior citizens, unlike our incumbent, Lynn Schulman.