When Healthcare Is Under Attack
Since President Donald Trump was elected nearly two years ago, NYSNA nurses have been fighting back against attacks on our healthcare system. We knew from the pre-election policy blueprint, Project 2025, that the Trump administration was planning deep cuts to our healthcare system that would slash people’s access to healthcare and skyrocket healthcare costs.
We are still in the midst of this fight. Since the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) passed last year, changes to Medicaid have stripped people of benefits and hospitals of revenue. Congressional Republicans refused to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies that allow people of lower and middle income to afford health insurance, leaving even more people uninsured and causing insurance rates for everyone to soar.
People who receive health benefits from their employers, including NYSNA members, have also felt the impact of healthcare cuts. Nurses directly experienced skyrocketing healthcare costs at the bargaining table, where hospitals have pressured nurses to accept higher costs and lesser benefits. When more OBBBA-driven cuts to Medicaid take effect in January 2027, after midterm elections, we expect millions more Americans to lose coverage.
NYSNA Members Fight Back
NYSNA members have been active in sounding the alarm against cuts, marching, speaking out and lobbying at the state and local levels for increased hospital funding to stabilize New York’s struggling safety-net hospitals. We have also advocated to mitigate federal healthcare cuts through preserving New York’s Essential Plan and passing the New York Health Act, a long-term, sustainable solution to guaranteeing healthcare for all at the state level. We are putting into action that rallying cry you hear during our marches, rallies and lobby days: “When healthcare is under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!”
We are increasingly working with our communities to fight back. When the University of Vermont Health (UVMH) system proposed closing the UVMH-Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital Adirondack Blood Donor Center, NYSNA members rallied and harnessed community support. We collected patient stories and invited patients and community members to join us outside the hospital to speak out against the closure of this essential service, which has successfully supplied blood to the entire North Country for decades.1 UMVH moved ahead with the closure, outsourcing its blood donation program to the American Red Cross. Within weeks, blood supplies were critically low.
When North Star Health Alliance proposed closing the maternal health unit at Claxton-Hepburn Medical Campus,, we also sprang into action and organized with our community to fight back. NYSNA members spoke out multiple times, including at a Department of Health-required public hearing. We encouraged community members to sign our petition and submit testimony in opposition to the closure. We are continuing to engage the community to push back against this closure (see the story on page 6).
Labor and Community Unite
We know it will take more than one union to make the kind of change we need. Joining community allies to celebrate 61 years of Medicare and Medicaid on July 30 reminded NYSNA nurses of this. Those programs to strengthen America’s healthcare system and social safety net happened at a turbulent time — and only through the great efforts of healthcare workers, patient advocates and community activists across the country.
We Are Not Going Back
It’s hard to imagine what our healthcare system was like before advocates successfully pushed the U.S. to create these essential public programs. Approximately half of the country was uninsured — including seniors, babies, expectant parents and people with disabilities. We had tens of millions of people who lacked access to quality, affordable healthcare and who suffered and died prematurely because of it.
NYSNA leaders joined rallies in Buffalo, Albany and New York City to call attention to the need to fight back against healthcare cuts that threaten to take us back to those bad old days. They also spoke out to remind people what’s possible when we fight for it. If we were able to create these programs from scratch then, we can and must strengthen them now.
We need to continue to build support for the NY Health Act at the state level and Medicare for All at the national level, and that begins with a strong fight that harnesses the solidarity of labor and communities to demand healthcare as a human right.