At 7:30 Monday morning, Terre Thomas drove to a YMCA of the North in Woodbury, where she attempted to recruit 80 fellow seniors to join her upcoming picket line. That was followed by a drive to the YMCA at the Southdale Mall in Edina, and then the Y in Burnsville and another in Shoreview.
How many will brave the cold for her cause, she isn’t exactly sure, but she’s determined to bring a cadre of gray-haired gym-goers to the corporate headquarters of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota on Wednesday to demand full restoration of their “Silver Sneakers” gym benefits.
“Two weeks before the deadline of switching to a new policy, Blue Cross Blue Shield announces they aren’t going to honor the membership they have always given out to members,” said Thomas on Monday.
After losing her husband four years ago, Thomas, 66, a retired nonprofit director from South Minneapolis, did her best to shake off what she described as an exhausting blanket of grief and signed up for the gym. She prided herself on staying fit, but the Silver Sneakers benefit through her health insurance provider, UCare, offered her more than free chair-based calisthenics, yoga and resistance training at Twin Cities YMCA and Life Time Fitness locations.
Silver Sneakers also offered her a community, she said, including a certified instructor named Haley and inspirational fellow gym-goers like her classmate Thelma, who recently passed away at the age of 99. When Thomas learned that UCare Medicare plans would soon be canceled entirely, she checked with her health insurance navigator and switched last month to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, confident that her Silver Sneakers coverage would continue.
26,000 seniors impacted
She would soon learn otherwise. With just 10 days to go before a Dec. 7 open enrollment deadline, Blue Cross Blue Shield informed 26,000 seniors that they and Tivity, a third-party administrator of fitness benefits, would no longer cover the cost of gym membership at YMCA of the North and Life Time Fitness locations throughout the Twin Cities.
Gym access will continue in out-state YMCAs and Life Time locations, as well as at lesser-known community gyms in the Twin Cities metro. Some of those facilities are nursing homes.
Y officials said they were blindsided by the decision, which they learned of from Blue Cross in late November.
“We were the only YMCAs to be excluded from the 2026 benefit,” said Terrell Benton, senior vice president of operations for the YMCA of the North, which serves the metro. “All the other state YMCAs are a part of it.”
Third-party fitness administrator hiked rates
Jim McManus, a spokesperson for Blue Cross Blue Shield, declined a phone interview on Monday, but sent a written statement. It reads: “The Medicare market is dealing with significant financial stability issues. One of the many cost pressures Blue Cross is facing related to Medicare coverage is an enormous price hike from our Medicare fitness vendor to keep all current fitness locations included in the network available to our members.”
“Blue Cross has no say in which locations are included in the network tiers offered by our Medicare fitness vendor, nor do we participate in any contract negotiations with the gyms,” the statement goes on to say. “As a steward of our members’ healthcare dollars, Blue Cross needs to ensure this benefit remains sustainable.”
Alarmed by the news, Thomas and her gym friend Steve Brandt — who recently won re-election to the Minneapolis Board of Estimate and Taxation — took action. At 1 p.m. Wednesday, the pair plan to lead a senior protest outside 3400 Yankee Drive in Eagan, the headquarters of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, demanding that the insurer find a way to roll back the decision to drop Y and Life Time Fitness access in the Twin Cities.
“People are mad,” said Thomas, who follows her favorite instructor to classes at both the Blaisdell YMCA in South Minneapolis and the Midway YMCA on University Avenue in St. Paul. “For a lot of people, this is the only thing that gets people out of the house. I go to Silver Sneakers three times a week, and lots of other people do, too. I don’t think they realized it would cause such a kerfuffle, but it has.”
Brandt, 73, said he received official notice from Blue Cross about losing the Silver Sneaker benefit in an email, and later a mailing, several days after calling the member line and checking on the benefit himself, prompted by a tip from a YMCA worker.
“There’s a lot of unanswered questions here,” Brandt said. “They didn’t tell us until after the enrollment period had begun. It’s not like we’re asking for something for nothing. My wife and I pay $612 per month for a Medicare supplement, and that’s on top of what we pay for Medicare. Everybody seems to be blame-shifting here.”
Seniors allowed to pay nothing out of pocket
Through Silver Sneakers, the YMCA of the North had offered a discounted rate to 7,800 seniors, dropping the monthly retail price from $77, Benton said.
Until now, UCare and Blue Cross Blue Shield covered the difference alongside third-party benefits administrators such as Tivity, allowing those seniors to pay nothing out of pocket. Some other health plans will continue to offer the full benefit in the Twin Cities, but switching insurance providers can be tricky for seniors with pre-existing health conditions if it means moving to a different network of doctors, Benton noted.
To compensate, the YMCA of the North says it will offer Silvers Sneakers members who have been newly excluded from the fitness benefit a discounted monthly rate of $49 per individual membership and $79 for a couple, he said.
“We just want to be able to continue to serve our community, and this obviously has a negative effect on being able to do that,” Benton said. “We’re continuing to encourage our members to go back to their health plan providers and to ask questions. These seniors, who are disproportionately affected by loneliness and isolation, we want to curb some of that.”
‘Most of us had already locked in our plans’
According to McManus, Blue Cross Medicare members will continue to have access to more than 600 fitness locations across the state, including more than 240 sites in the Twin Cities. Members will also have unlimited access to on-demand workout videos, live online fitness classes and additional fitness locations nationwide.
Brandt on Monday said the closest location to his South Minneapolis home covered by the provider is a nursing facility that offers six classes per week, compared to the Blaisdell Y, which offers as many classes in a single day.
Some members say the Y’s programming has been especially senior-friendly, and losing access to the community bonds they forged there, with limited opportunity to seek out a different insurer, is a slap in the face.
“Not only have these centers been a location for access to fitness equipment and classes, but they have provided a place for seniors to connect socially,” said Roger Green, a concerned Woodbury resident, in an email. “This move is reprehensible … coming just a couple of weeks before the end of the open enrollment period when most of us had already locked in our plans for 2026.”
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