NYC Retirees: Medicare Advantage

In the summer of 2021, New York City tried to change the health benefits of 250,000 municipal retirees. For more than 50 years these senior citizens and disabled first-responders had relied on the traditional Medicare-plus-Supplemental insurance that gave them access to their doctors and ensured their continuity of care. City Hall, however, wanted to strip them of these protections for a very simple reason: money. If the City could force people into a (much inferior) Medicare Advantage plan, the City’s financial obligations would shift to the federal government. Pollock Cohen represented an ad hoc group of retirees and won injunctive relief worth more than $900 million.