NYC Group Medicare Contract Rises From the Dead With $15B Aetna Pact

After much delay, the City of New York appears to be moving forward with a plan to transition its retiree health care coverage to a group Medicare Advantage plan, having recently chosen CVS Health Corp.’s Aetna to administer a PPO plan starting Sept. 1. The contract is valued at $15 billion over the first five years and four months of the term agreement.

The city’s plan to transition some 250,000 retirees and their eligible dependents away from fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare coverage was initially supposed to begin on April 1, 2022, and be managed by Elevance Health, Inc. (in partnership with EmblemHealth). Retirees petitioned to block the move, and state Supreme Court Judge Lyle Frank in March 2022 ruled that the proposal violated city law by requiring retirees who opted out of the switch to pay $191 per month to maintain their FFS coverage. That July, Elevance backed out of the deal.