Victories in the NY State Budget

The FY 2026-2027 New York State budget has finally passed — and NYSNA nurses’ relentless advocacy led to several critical victories for nurses, our patients and our nursing practice.

Preventing Patients From Staying Home All Alone
A chief priority for NYSNA nurses this budget season was keeping the dangerous Hospital at Home proposal out of New York state’s final budget. Under Hospital at Home programs, acute care patients are monitored virtually in their homes instead of receiving in-person, around-the-clock expert nursing care in a hospital. NYSNA nurses traveled to Albany twice this spring — in addition to launching a statewide social media and advertising campaign and gathering thousands of petition signatures in opposition to the proposal — to warn legislators of the program’s very real dangers. Thanks to our advocacy, elected officials ultimately listened to nurses’ expert opinions and rejected the dangerous proposal.  

NYSNA President Nancy Hagans, RN, BSN, CCRN, said, “This is a victory for every patient in New York. Nurses refused to stay quiet while corporate interests tried to push a program that would leave patients home all alone, with no hospital, no team and no around-the-clock care. We know what our patients need because we are at the bedside every single day, and we carried their voices straight to the halls of power in Albany.”

Victories for Our Nursing Practice
NYSNA also defeated several attacks on nursing practice standards, including:

• The proposal to allow “unlicensed medication aides” to administer medications in nursing homes.  
• The proposal to allow “medical assistants” working in outpatient settings and physician offices to administer vaccinations to patients under physician supervision.
• The proposal to extend paramedicine programs and allow emergency medical technicians to engage in nursing practice in nonemergency settings.

In addition to removing these dangerous proposals from the final budget, nurses’ advocacy also led to an extension of the Nurse Practitioner Modernization Act for another four years, until 2030.

Public Sector Wins Tier 6 Pension Reforms
For years, nurses have been fighting alongside our fellow public sector unions to win real Tier 6 pension reforms, and this year we were able to secure reforms that will put more money in nurses’ pockets while still ensuring our pensions stay strong. 

• The new employee contribution bands will mean that most nurses will see a 0.075% reduction in their contribution rate — which means 0.75% will be going back into nurses’ pockets! Those on lower salary scales will see an even larger reduction of up to 1.75% to their contribution rate. 
• We were also able to secure an increase to the pensionable overtime amount from $22,500 to $30,000 with annual indexing of 3% as well as a two-year extension on the overtime exclusion, which ensures your contribution rate does not increase if your overtime pushes you into a higher income contribution rate — again ensuring more money is staying in nurses’ pockets.

These reforms have taken years of advocacy to secure and will be crucial to recruiting and retaining public sector nurses.

More Budget Highlights
The legislature passed more NYSNA nurse priorities during the budget and legislation session this year: 

• The budget included more than $2 billion in additional hospital funding to help fill the gaps in funding due to the Trump administration’s cuts. The budget increases Medicaid and safety net hospital funding and adds $1.3 billion to a Safety Net Transformation Program¹ that subsidizes new safety net hospital partnerships.² 
• New legislation will tighten the oversight and regulation of temporary staffing agencies and give the health commissioner the power to limit profits at temporary healthcare staffing agencies.  

What’s Next?
Although New York came through with additional funding to dampen the blow of federal healthcare cuts, there were still cuts to New York’s Essential Plan. Millions of New Yorkers will likely see their health premiums rise, or they’ll become uninsured. A new tax on billionaires’ second homes will raise revenues, but broader proposals to tax the rich to help fund healthcare and other needs fell short this year.³ The budget was historically late, leaving little time to tackle bigger pieces of legislation like the NY Health Act, a NYSNA priority that would guarantee healthcare for all.

NYSNA nurses will continue to advocate to strengthen New York’s healthcare system and workforce, especially as New Yorkers across the state brace themselves for the impacts of the Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act.

Sources:
^{1 https://www.health.ny.gov/facilities/hospital/safety_net_transformation/ 
2 https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2026/05/state-budget-spends-generously-on-health-care-providers-00938688 
3 https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/new-york-s-tax-on-wealthy-second-home-owners-is-going-into-effect-here-s-how-the-pied-%C3%A0-terre-tax-will-work/ar-AA24ihik}