The city’s roughly 250,000 Medicare-eligible retirees will remain in their current health plans with the same benefits this fall after a trial court judge this summer blocked the city from moving ahead with the Aetna Medicare Advantage PPO Plan. The city is appealing the decision.


Leo Hoenig, a founder of the UFT and longtime active member of the Retired Teachers Chapter, died on June 3 at age 86.

After four years, our annual Nassau Section “Not Back to School” Luncheon is returning. Please join us on Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023, from noon to 3 p.m. at The Inn at New Hyde Park, 214 Jericho Turnpike, New Hyde Park, NY 11040.

The UFT has a partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK), the top-ranked cancer hospital in the Northeast, that benefits both in-service and retired UFT members. When you or a family member is facing a cancer diagnosis, MSK’s specialists and services are available to you. 

Senior citizens need to be wary of emails, phone calls and text messages designed to get them to hand over money or share personal information, an elder fraud expert told UFT retirees at the Retired Teachers Chapter membership meeting in May. Fraud is a booming business, said Anna Diao, chief of the Elder Fraud Unit in the Queens District Attorney’s Office.

Retired educator Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa has sought refuge in libraries and books her whole life, and now she is contributing her own works to libraries — historical novels that reflect the richness, complexity, beauty and brutality of her Afro-Puerto Rican heritage.