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"If these cuts take effect without replacement funding, it won't just mean longer lines—it means people won't be able to get care when they need it," said one healthcare worker.
A coalition of frontline healthcare workers, unions, and economists launched an effort Thursday to build support for a proposed ballot measure in California that would impose a one-time tax on the state's billionaires to avert a looming crisis spurred by national Republicans' unprecedented Medicaid cuts.
The proposed ballot initiative, titled "The 2026 Billionaire Tax Act," would levy a single 5% tax on the wealth of California's roughly 200 billionaires to offset healthcare funding shortfalls caused by the roughly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts that US President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans approved over the summer.
Service Employees International Union–United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), one of the largest healthcare worker unions in the country, is spearheading the organizing push to get the proposal on the California ballot in November 2026. The union expects support for the measure to grow quickly in the coming weeks, and organizers said they hope the effort can serve as a "playbook" for other states working to mitigate the increasingly devastating impacts of the GOP assault on Medicaid.
Dave Regan, the president of SEIU-UHW, said during a press call Thursday that "it is a 100% certainty that we have the ability to put this on the ballot in 2026, and we intend to do so."
"We know what's going to happen if we don't do this," Regan added, alluding to the hospital closures, healthcare job cuts, and other havoc the Trump-GOP Medicaid cuts are already causing across the nation.
Supporters of the new initiative warn that if Medicaid funding cuts aren't offset with new revenue, California could lose around 145,000 healthcare jobs and see hospital closures across the state, a disaster for vulnerable families.
"We are already short-staffed, and every week more patients walk through our doors with fewer places to go," said Mayra Castanada, an ultrasound technologist in Lynwood, California. "If these cuts take effect without replacement funding, it won't just mean longer lines—it means people won't be able to get care when they need it."
"The tax is small relative to the massive gains billionaires have made, yet large enough to preserve programs that are crucial for California's economy and its continued success."
Experts estimate that the one-time tax would raise $100 billion—a fraction of the staggering $2 trillion in combined wealth controlled by the 200 wealthiest Californians. Billionaires impacted by the tax would include Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, two of the richest men in the world.
Emmanuel Saez, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a leading expert on wealth inequality, voiced support for the initiative, saying that "the wealth of California billionaires has exploded in recent years while health and education in California are getting defunded by the Trump administration."
"The tax is small relative to the massive gains billionaires have made, yet large enough to preserve programs that are crucial for California's economy and its continued success," said Saez.
Former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich also backed the initiative, saying the GOP Medicaid cuts have sparked a "manufactured crisis."
"These federal cuts didn't happen by accident—they were designed to shield billionaires from contributing while pushing the consequences onto patients and workers," said Reich. "A time-limited emergency tax on the ultra-wealthy is a practical way to keep the healthcare system functioning."
Francesca Albanese wrote that states that supported Israel financially and militarily "could and should be held liable for aiding, assisting, or jointly participating in internationally wrongful acts."
A report by one of the United Nations’ leading experts on Israel-Palestine describes the more than two years of genocide in Gaza as a “collective crime,” for which all nations with financial, diplomatic, and military ties with Israel are culpable.
The draft report, published Monday, was written by Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, who is expected to speak at length on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza this weekend as part of the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s lecture series in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Her report names more than 60 countries, without which she says the systematic destruction of Gaza—which has killed or injured more than 10% of the strip’s population and displaced nearly everyone there—would not have been possible.
“Framed by colonial narratives that dehumanize the Palestinians, this livestreamed atrocity has been facilitated through third states’ direct support, material aid, diplomatic protection, and, in some cases, active participation,” Albanese wrote. “The world now stands on a knife-edge between the collapse of the international rule of law and hope for renewal. Renewal is only possible if complicity is confronted, responsibilities are met, and justice is upheld.”
Her report says that the states most responsible are “primarily Western ones,” the United States being chief among them.
The US accounts for two-thirds of Israel’s annual arms imports. And according to a report out this week from the Center for International Policy, it has spent over $38 billion since October 2023, both directly arming Israel through military grant programs and waging war against its enemies in Iran, Lebanon, and other nations across the Middle East.
Under both a Democratic and Republican administration, the US has also provided critical diplomatic cover for Israel, proposing temporary “pauses” and “truces” to the conflict before international bodies, “sidestepping a permanent ceasefire and ensuring a continuation of the violence.”
On several occasions, the US has used its veto power to block unanimous votes in favor of a binding ceasefire resolution by the UN Security Council. In September, it did so for the fifth time, vetoing a 14-1 resolution that would have required both parties to halt the violence and release all hostages.
The US has sanctioned the International Criminal Court (ICC), which issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Trump administration also placed Albanese herself under sanctions in July for her support of the ICC’s efforts.
American non-governmental organizations supported by US President Donald Trump were also directly involved with the creation and administration of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which administered aid sites after humanitarian organizations like the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) were pushed out. In just over three months, more than 1,000 Palestinian aid seekers were killed in routine massacres by Israeli troops, who have described the GHF sites as “killing fields.”
Many senior US politicians, Albanese said, have helped to prolong the genocide through rhetoric that frames Israeli lives as more important and worthy of protection than Palestinian ones.
“Israelis were depicted as ‘civilians’ and ‘hostages,’ and Palestinians as ‘Hamas terrorists,’ ‘legitimate’ or ‘collateral’ targets,’ ‘human shields’ or lawfully detained ‘prisoners,’” she wrote.
Albanese also singled out many European nations as particularly culpable. These include Germany, which provided Israel with over $565 million worth of weapons, making it the second-largest exporter behind the US; and the United Kingdom, which has participated in hundreds of surveillance missions over Gaza and whose prime minister, Keir Starmer, defended Israel’s right to cut off water and power to civilians at the war’s outset.
She also called out others that increased trade with Israel during the two years of genocide—Germany, Poland, Greece, Italy, Denmark, and France—as well as Arab countries like the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco. She said their continued economic support not only “legitimizes and sustains the Israeli apartheid regime” but “countered the trade decline Israel might otherwise have faced” as a result of its increasing global isolation.
Albanese wrote that for helping Israel, which she described as a “genocidal apartheid state,” these nations “could and should be held liable for aiding, assisting, or jointly participating in internationally wrongful acts.”
Though a ceasefire is now in effect between Israel and Gaza, Albanese said on Wednesday that the plan, which currently has Israel occupying more than half the Gaza Strip, was “absolutely inadequate and it doesn’t comply with international law.”
She said that the recognition of a Palestinian state by several Western nations in recent months has “been a pretense of doing something while the emergency was to discuss... how we stop the genocide.”
Albanese said that the states “who still have ties with Israel, diplomatic, but especially economic, political, and military ties, are all responsible in some measure.”
As health insurance companies rake in billions in profits, the California Democrat argues that a single-payer system would help US businesses and cut costs.
With the second-longest federal government shutdown dragging on and Americans concerned about soaring health insurance premiums and coverage losses, Congressman Ro Khanna on Thursday again made the case for Medicare for All.
On CNBC's "Squawk Box," co-host Joe Kernen made clear he doesn't support Medicare for All but expressed concern about rising premiums. He also admitted, "I don't know what the answer is."
Khanna (D-Calif.), meanwhile, reiterated his support for a single-payer system, in part by highlighting how private health insurance companies are raking in billions of dollars in profits each year, at the expense of patients.
If the United States extended eligibility for Medicare, which is now only available to Americans ages 65 and older, "it would help private business," the congressman argued. "It would lower healthcare costs."
A 2020 analysis from the Economic Policy Institute found that Medicare for All would benefit companies and workers by supporting self-employment and small business development, boosting wages, increasing job quality, and lessening the stress and economic shock of losing or changing employment. That same year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that shifting to Medicare for All could save $650 billion annually.
Khanna on Thursday pushed back against claims that under Medicare for All, Americans wouldn't be able to get the healthcare they need, saying: "I don't think Medicare is rationing more than the private industry. [If] you are on private insurance, that's where you get rationed. You have to get your pre-authorization. You have things denied. Medicare, actually, doesn't do that."
Although Medicare can deny coverage, KFF found in 2023 that people with employer-sponsored health insurance were twice as likely as those on Medicare for Medicaid—which covers people with low incomes and disabilities—to have a claim denied.
"Traditional Medicare, also known as Original Medicare, has historically required little in the way of pre-authorization for beneficiaries seeking services; pre-authorization was typically the domain of Medicare Advantage," or plans administered by private insurance companies, Kiplinger reported this summer. "But that's about to change."
Under President Donald Trump's "profoundly unqualified" pick to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz, CMS will require prior authorization for 17 services it claims "are vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse" in six states next year.
Beginning in January, Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington will serve as testing grounds "to provide an improved and expedited prior authorization process relative to Original Medicare's existing processes, helping patients and providers avoid unnecessary or inappropriate care and safeguarding federal taxpayer dollars," CMS said in a June statement.
Julie Alderman Boudreau, who has worked as a researcher at various organizations, warned at the time that "this is a Medicare cut by another name. This will cause seniors to delay care or forgo it altogether."
The CMS announcement came just days before Trump signed Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which contained cuts to Medicaid and did not extend expiring Affordable Care Act premium tax credits. The current government shutdown, which began on October 1, stems from Democrats' fight to undo the GOP attacks on Medicaid and ACA subsidies.
The CBO estimates that 10 million Americans could be booted off Medicaid because of cuts. Additionally, more than 20 million Americans who buy insurance via ACA marketplaces are expected to see their premiums spike next year, and some of them may not be able to afford any plans. Multiple polls released this week show that US voters are concerned about premium hikes.
One of those surveys, released Monday by Data for Progress and Groundwork Collaborative, also shows that voters want Democrats in Congress to keep fighting for a fix to the looming healthcare crisis, even if it means the shutdown continues.
Khanna—one of several Democrats considered a potential 2028 presidential candidate—noted on social media earlier this week that KFF polling shows that "78% of Americans favor extending ACA credits."
"Republicans are once again trying to reward the ultrawealthy at the expense of regular folks," he added. "It's time to pass Medicare for All and solidify Americans' right to affordable healthcare."