Healthcare workers across several New York City hospitals held a protest on Monday as Senate Republicans debated passing President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” that could cut healthcare for 16 million people.
“To win this fight we must unite!” yelled Brooklyn nurses, hospital administrators and advocates outside New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital in Park Slope.
Some dressed in scrubs, the protesters used signs and posters to shade themselves from the unrelenting heat wave to shout: “Hands off Medicaid!”
The rally, led by healthcare union 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, was a call to Washington leaders to lay off cuts to healthcare.
“That’s our essential right to have Medicaid for our patients, to keep our hospitals open,” said Alison Harewood, a medical assistant at the hospital. “Because if we don’t, if the Medicaid cuts, then we won’t have no jobs. We won’t have nothing to pay our bills.”
Similar rallies were simultaneously held at One Brooklyn Health-Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center, Wyckoff Heights Medical Center and at One Brooklyn Health-Interfaith Medical Center.
As the bill currently stands, it would primarily cut large parts of Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. Not only would 1.5 million New Yorkers lose their health insurance, but it would significantly raise the cost of healthcare, defund hospitals and affect anyone reliant on the medical system, the advocates said.
“It impacts a lot of our nursing homes because those are smaller facilities, they don't get as much funding as hospitals, and they're in much more danger of closing down,” said Michael Guevarez, a former nursing home worker. “That’s where many of our elderly live; it’s actually much more of a threat to them because this is their home, this is where they live, and they oftentimes don’t have family they can go back to.”
1199SEIU said they have plans beyond organizing protests. Members will be traveling to Washington, D.C. to confront Republican Senators on their votes.
“This won’t just impact Brooklyn, New York,” said Rose Ryan, press secretary of 1199SEIU. “It will impact everywhere.”
