Michael Mulgrew Takes Us for Fools

He weaves an appeal to fear, hoping we'll give up on preserving Medicare.

I watched much of yesterday’s RTC meeting on Zoom. I was heartened to see they made it a point to allow questions, unlike last time. I see now it was only so that Michael Mulgrew could spout his new talking point over and over. Still, it’s good to see they’ve responded to our criticism, reluctant though they may be.

I have not been retired very long, but I already feel disrespected and stereotyped by UFT Unity bosses. Last month they cut short a meeting, citing a dangerous demonstration that appeared to be a big nothing. This month we were expected to sit through a PowerPoint about telephone scams and such. It’s like they think every single one of us will fall for those scams, so why shouldn’t they pull one too?

Mulgrew seems to suggest if we don’t capitulate and give in to his calls for a corporate health care plan, with Aetna deciding whether or not we get care, we will all be placed into HIP. You see, the city only has to offer one plan. He said it over and over. This is his new talking point, and he adores it.

Mulgrew seems unfamiliar with the results of the second lawsuit, in which a judge stated taking real Medicare, with a Medigap plan, away from us would cause irreparable harm. He seems not to know that the city was enjoined to keep providing the care they’d promised us for decades. If he really doesn’t know, he’s incredibly uninformed.

If that’s not the case, of course, he’s lying through his teeth.

Here’s the thing, though—whatever the case is, Mulgrew takes retirees for fools. He appears to believe we’re a bunch of doddering old codgers who will shudder at his reprehensible appeals to fear. He thinks he’s smarter than we are.

Michael Mulgrew has an army of advisors, paid with our dues. They have advised him, at this juncture, to apply the talking point that if we don’t listen to him, we will all be placed on HIP. This tells me his advisors are not very bright. The fact that he listens to them tells me Michael Mulgrew is not very bright either.

More importantly, the fact that Michael Mulgrew thinks we will buy this argument suggests he thinks we are stupid. An appeal to fear is a logical fallacy. Obviously, we are supposed to conclude that we should go out and beg to be on a Medicare Advantage plan, so we can help Mulgrew pay the billions of dollars he has foolishly promised to give Eric Adams

Mulgrew later came out with another whopper. Upon being asked why UFT wasn’t opposing the city’s move to impose copays on GHI Senior Care, he said those copays were only temporary, a stopgap. Well, I’ve been using city health care since 1984, and I have never seen copays reduced. They just go up and up. (You will certainly think twice about visiting an urgent care when the copay is a hundred bucks.)

In fact, I remember someone challenging him at the DA about Medicare copays. Mulgrew was pushing the first Advantage plan, which was the bestest thing ever (until the second Advantage plan which is really the bestest thing ever). He said something like oh those. Those have been coming for a long time.

Now, someone with a cynical attitude about MLC and UFT bosses might think they just dumped them in there to make the Advantage plan look better. Well, I am beyond cynical about all of them, and I absolutely believe they wanted to make the $1800 cap on Advantage copays look better. (This notwithstanding, no copays at all beat the hell out of an $1800 cap.)

Mulgrew is responsible for our current health care crisis. He likes to blame the MLC, but we now know that he himself initiated it, in exchange for getting the retroactive raise the cops and firefighters got. It is beyond incredible that he gave away over a billion dollars from our stabilization fund, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Medicare, and tried to fix it by taking retirees off Medicare.

He could have gone to arbitration, but chose instead to raid the stabilization fund and impose crap raises on the entire city. Michael Mulgrew is the worst negotiator I’ve ever seen, far less effective than even children who cry for gum at the supermarket checkout line. If by some chance he finds people who know how to do their jobs, no matter how slavishly loyal they are to his preposterous notions, he removes them.

He needs to go, as does the entire UFT Unity cult. They blindly support him, and they have betrayed us in spectacular fashion.

Don’t forget to vote, every chance you get.