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national nurses united
An Ebola Outbreak Made More Deadly and Dangerous Thanks to Trump
We lived through another pandemic nightmare with this president, but the warnings about what he was unleashing with his 2025 assault on USAID and CDC were not heeded. Once again, people are paying with their lives.
May 27, 2026
The current, rapidly metastasizing Ebola outbreak in East and Central Africa is a sobering reminder of how unprepared we remain for the inevitability of the next pandemic that is always sure to come. Especially when the US continues to hamstring the global efforts needed to contain deadly eruptions.
As of Sunday, May 24, there were 231 deaths and more than 1,000 cases reported, primarily in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), though 10 African countries are now considered at risk. “You cannot cut the systems that detect and stop outbreaks early— then act shocked when they spiral. Pathogens exploit weak systems,” said Krutika Kuppalli, MD FIDSA, in a post on Sunday.
On Monday, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), told the world that the outbreak was “outpacing us."
The Trump administration, previously the WHO's largest funder, is the biggest reason of these failures and need to play catch up. Assistance from the US to the DRC reportedly fell from $1.4 billion in 2024 to just $21 million in 2026, said Kuppalli.
“Many of the international systems created or strengthened after earlier Ebola crises have been weakened,” the Washington Post reported last week. While the US once "played a central coordinating role in previous Ebola response efforts,” the newspaper noted, "that infrastructure has been significantly diminished following Trump administration cuts" in early 2025.
With the US pulling out of the WHO and eviscerating the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which routed money and supplies quickly, the ability to help organizations on the ground pivot from prevention "to contact tracing and communications" has vanished, said Stephanie Psaki, US coordinator for global health security in the Biden administration.
The Trump administration has even barred key infectious disease officials from communicating with the WHO. “The whole disaster response capability at USAID no longer exists,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, the former lead of USAID’s Ebola response team.
On May 20, National Nurses United, issued a statement admonishing the Trump administration for making everyone less safe in the face of the outbreak.
“Nurses understand the life-or-death importance of prevention, and when it comes to infectious diseases, that means having strong infrastructure in place to rapidly detect and respond to new outbreaks before they are out of control," said NNU. "The Trump administration has purposely taken a sledgehammer to that infrastructure over the past year.”
Nurses are prominent among the health workers, and health policy researchers, who have long warned of the danger of sudden outbreaks that can lead to massive, deadly pandemics.
“The arrival of the next great pandemic has always been a ‘when,’ not an ‘if,’ and firewalls for stopping it are getting thinner,” journalists Conn Hallinan and Carl Bloice wrote in 2005 in the California Nurses Association’s Revolution magazine. That piece was written amid concern for the spreading of avian flu, but the warning signs of a failing prevention and response system were already evident. “Public health budgets in this nation and across the globe are being systematically starved of funding,” they wrote.
Four years later, H1NI, also known as swine flu, brought the fears to life. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated there were 60.8 million cases and an estimated range of between 151,700 to 575,400 deaths worldwide its first year alone. Deborah Burger, RN, then president of the California Nurses Association, warned, “We should learn the lessons of the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, one of which was the enormous mitigating effect on mortality of adequate nursing care.”
Those working on the frontlines to care for infected patients are particularly vulnerable. Speaking to Hallinan and Bloice, University of Minnesota researcher Michael Osterholm predicted back in 2005 that “health care workers would become ill and die at rates similar to, or even higher than in the general public" in the face of a pandemic.
On July 17, 2009, Karen Ann Hays, a cancer care RN at Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Carmichael, CA near Sacramento, and a healthy triathlete and marathon runner, became the first health care worker in California to die of H1N1. Only after the union announced plans for a one-day strike affecting 16,000 RNs in California and Nevada, did then-Gov. Schwarzenegger and major hospitals implement new safety protocols.
In March 2014, the largest outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus was reported in West Africa. By August, the WHO declared a public health emergency as it spread in Africa, and reached Europe and the US. As noted, the outbreak was particularly dangerous for healthcare workers exposed to Ebola patients.
Recalling the spread of H1N1, NNU urged federal, state, and local officials to adhere to strict infectious disease guidelines to protect patients, healthcare workers, and the public. Seeing little done by September 2014, more than 1,000 nurses held a march and die-in during a convention in Las Vegas to alert the public to inadequate US preparations to stop the spread of Ebola and similar pandemics.
Days later, a patient recently returned to the US from Liberia, was diagnosed with Ebola in a Dallas hospital and died. Within two weeks, two Dallas nurses in that hospital, Nina Pham and Amber Vincent, were infected. NNU called on President Barack Obama to “invoke his executive authority” to order all US hospitals to meet the highest “uniform, national standards and protocols” to “safely protect patients, all healthcare workers and the public.”
Burger testified to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on the lack of mandated protections for nurses and patients. “The risk of exposure to the population at large merely starts with front-line caregivers like registered nurses, physicians and other healthcare workers—it does not end there," Burger told lawmakers. "If we cannot protect our nurses and other healthcare workers, we cannot protect anyone.”
A two-day strike the next month at 86 hospitals and clinics over the lack of Ebola preparedness again helped spur needed measures. Within weeks, the federal government, and some states, including California, enacted reforms to improve pandemic protections in US facilities, and as NNU was also urging, escalated support for global protections in West Africa.
Cuba was in the forefront of providing direct frontline care in West Africa in 2014, sending 165 Cuban nurses and doctors, risking their own lives. At a time today with the US threatening an invasion of Cuba following months of an illegal blockade that has had a debilitating impact on its health care system, it’s worth recalling that as recently as 2024, Cuba had dispatched more than 20,000 medical staff to more than 50 countries in humanitarian missions.
When Trump first came into office, he ignored the preparedness lessons. Beginning the morning after his 2017 inauguration, Trump systematically dismantled a pandemic infrastructure response program put in place by Obama. By January 2020, when the WHO had begun warning of the outbreak known as Covid-19, the Trump administration was caught flatfooted. As the initial US infections appeared, Trump’s first public statement that month was this: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
In contrast, NNU had already begun to press Trump to implement national and safety protocols and measures, with public accountability. Instead, Trump’s response was months of denials, deflections, and promotion of false cures while dismissing the best protective measures. By June 2020, with 110,000 dead Americans, Trump insisted, “It is dying out, it’s going to fade away.”
By February 2024, the US counted nearly 7 million cases, and over 1.1 million deaths. So many lives could have been saved with advance preparedness and rapid implementation of the proper safety measures.
Hospital employers and numerous state governments, especially in GOP-controlled states, took their lead from the Trump administration to slow walk or ignore critical protections. Workers in essential front-line occupations, from public transportation to nursing homes and hospitals, as well as lower income jobs in grocery and drug stores, poultry and other meat processing, and service industries generally, paid a high price, especially workers of color.
Through August 2023, the Covid death count hit 5,753 for health care workers overall, including 501 RNs. Filipinos, 4 percent of all RNs, accounted for 21 percent of the deaths among nurses.
In the 2014 outbreak, 881 doctors, nurses, and midwives were infected in West Africa, and 513 died. The crisis created a severe shortage of healthcare workers across the region.
By May 21 in the current Ebola outbreak, at least four health worker deaths have been reported in the DRC. Three Red Cross volunteers have also died. One doctor evacuated from the DRC, waiting in a specialized hospital room in Prague to see whether he has Ebola, said his former colleagues in the DRC are beginning to die of the deadly disease.
The International Rescue Committee warned on Tuesady that thus outbreak is spreading faster than responders can contain it and risks becoming "the deadliest on record."
As the NNU warned last week, neither the nation nor the world can afford another public health mismanagement disaster from the like of Trump. “Nurses have already lived through one bungled, global health emergency response during the first Trump administration," said the union, "and we are appalled to know that when it comes to Ebola, hantavirus, or any other infectious disease, the United States under Donald Trump is now even less prepared than in 2020."Keep ReadingShow Less
'No Patient Deserves This': Doctors, Nurses Say Trump Blockade Is Killing Sick Cubans
"We do everything with love to assist people, but the reality right now is that we don’t have enough resources," said one Cuban doctor, who added that "the main cause of everything is the USA."
Mar 27, 2026
The Trump administration's oil blockade of Cuba—an escalation of the 65-year US stranglehold on the socialist island's economy—is killing Cubans amid a severe shortage of electricity and critical basic medical supplies, doctors and nurses there told reporters this week.
"I can’t tell you how many deaths, but I’m sure there are more than in the same period last year,” Dr. Alioth Fernandez, chief anesthesiologist at William Soler Pediatric Hospital in Havana, told The New York Times in an article published Friday. “I see it in shift handovers, in colleagues’ comments, and in children I’ve operated on.”
Cuba's universal healthcare system is internationally known. Its "Army of White Coats" has been deployed around the world, both to provide routine and specialized care, as well as during emergencies such as the Haiti earthquake, Sierra Leone Ebola outbreak, and Covid-19 pandemic in Italy.
Despite decades of success under increasingly adverse conditions, Cuba's vaunted health system is under tremendous strain, due in no small part to the cumulative effects of generations of US economic sanctions.
"Since I was born, this is the most difficult time, without any doubt," José Carlos, a resident intern at Havana Cardiology Institute, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Thursday. "We do everything with love to assist people, but the reality right now is that we don’t have enough resources."
The lack of fuel is limiting ambulance service and keeping many doctors and other medical professionals from commuting to hospitals that are canceling surgeries and discharging patients early. As Common Dreams reported earlier this week, more than 96,000 Cubans—including 11,000 children—are waiting for surgery due to the fuel shortage.
"Everything is hitting us—energy, resources, transportation," Carlos told the CBC.
When the lights go out, neonatal nurses use hand-pumped ventilators to keep infants alive. Without power, hospitals and clinics can't administer chemotherapy cycles or dialysis treatments.
“I don’t know how long we can keep going,” Xenia Álvarez, the mother of a 21-year-old man who suffers a rare genetic disease and requires full-time use of a ventilator, told The New York Times.
Shortages of basic medicines and supplies are forcing doctors to substitute medications, delay treatments, or even ask patients' relatives to find supplies themselves. Antibiotics, painkillers, and medications to treat chronic diseases are scarce, as are gloves, syringes, and diagnostic equipment. Hospital staff also report difficulty maintaining sterile conditions.
While the US government claims that humanitarian goods like medicine are exempt from sanctions, critics counter that the fuel blockade, along with severe restrictions on banking and shipping, effectively block many medical supplies from reaching the island. The Trump administration has also been pressuring countries into expelling the lifesaving Cuban medical teams, sparking widespread outrage and condemnation.
After the Fidel Castro-led revolution that ousted the US-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, the United States imposed an economic embargo on the island that has been perennially condemned by an overwhelming majority of United Nations member states for 33 years. Cuba says US sanctions have cost its economy more than $200 billion in inflation-adjusted losses.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently admitted that the economic chokehold is meant to force political change in Cuba while simultaneously disparaging the Cuban economy as "dysfunctional."
Rubio also said that although President Donald Trump is currently focused on the US-Israeli war of choice on Iran—one of seven nations attacked since the self-proclaimed "president of peace" returned to the White House—he would "be doing something with Cuba very soon."
Trump said earlier this month that he believes he'll "be having the honor of taking Cuba," language echoing the 19th century US imperialists who conquered the island along with Puerto Rico and the Philippines from Spain.
In addition to patients, the crisis in Cuba is also taking a physical and psychological toll on Cuban doctors—who, even with a recent raise earn just 100 pesos, or about $2.40, per 12-hour shift. This, in a country in which a dozen eggs cost nearly $10. Many doctors rely upon side hustles to get by.
"Doctors' pay is just for basic things," said Carlos. "It doesn’t allow you to buy many things in the supermarket or go to a restaurant or a hotel, or things like that."
Breakdowns and burnout are on the rise.
"I've seen doctors cry," one physician, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, told Reuters. "With this crisis, they cry. They've stopped working, they've become depressed. You can see it on their faces."
Despite the worsening situation, Carlos told the CBC that he does not want to leave Cuba, and blamed the US for the crisis.
"The main cause of everything is the USA," he said. "I have no doubt about that."
Some do want to leave, blaming their own government as well the US embargo for Cuba's suffering. Others are taking things one day at a time.
"We don’t know what will happen," a nurse who gave only her first name, Rita, told the CBC, "so we just keep working."
The mounting—and preventable—deaths in Cuba are prompting renewed calls for the US to lift sanctions on Cuba.
"No patient deserves this. Trump's cruel Cuban blockade is killing people unnecessarily," National Nurses United, the largest US nurses' union, said on social media Friday. "Depriving Cubans of essential resources needed to sustain life and health is an unconscionable violation of human rights. Nurses say: End the blockade now!"
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) also weighed in during a Thursday floor speech in which she said that "Cuba poses no threat to us, yet we are strangling an entire nation with economic warfare."
Trump's oil blockade is strangling an entire nation.
Families are going without food. Water systems are failing. Hospitals are struggling to stay open. This is economic warfare.
I'm calling for an immediate end to this cruel and indefensible blockade. Hands off Cuba. pic.twitter.com/MNybPNlBHn
— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) March 26, 2026
"Families are going without food. Water systems are failing. Hospitals are struggling to stay open," she continued. "These tactics are designed to suffocate an island into submission. Make no mistake: This unconscionable suffering is occurring because Trump is trying to force regime change."
"Hands off Cuba," Omar added. "End the blockade now."
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‘Pretti’s Death Will Not Be in Vain’: Nurses Plan Nationwide Week of Action Against ICE Terror
"ICE messed with the wrong profession. We nurses will fight to abolish ICE and bring about a vision for a healthy society based on nurses’ values of caring, compassion, and community."
Jan 27, 2026
The largest union of nurses in the United States is holding protests across the country this week to protest the killing of one of their own, Alex Pretti, by federal officers in Minneapolis and to demand the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose agents are terrorizing communities nationwide.
Demonstrations organized by National Nurses United (NNU) have been planned in more than a dozen states—from California to Florida to New York—as grassroots backlash against the Trump administration's lawless mass deportation efforts, detentions, and violent crackdowns on dissent continue to mount.
"Pretti's death will not be in vain. ICE messed with the wrong profession," NNU said in a statement. "We nurses will fight to abolish ICE and bring about a vision for a healthy society based on nurses’ values of caring, compassion, and community."
NNU, which represents more than 225,000 nurses in the US, said in the hours after Pretti's killing that federal agents "have executed one of our fellow nurses, Alex Pretti, who saved veterans’ lives as an intensive care unit RN for the Veterans Health Administration."
"He not only advocated for his patients inside the VA as a member of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), but also took his advocacy to the streets to stand up for his community as nurses do," the union said. "We demand justice and accountability for his murder."
While demanding ICE's elimination as a federal agency, the nurses' union is also pushing senators to oppose any government funding legislation that includes money for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE.
"Call your senators and tell them to oppose any appropriations package that includes the Homeland Security Appropriations bill," NNU wrote in a social media post on Tuesday. "Congress must not give a penny to ICE. Our taxpayer dollars must not be used to murder and terrorize our communities!"
URGENT: Call your senators and tell them to oppose any appropriations package that includes the Homeland Security Appropriations bill.
Congress must not give a penny to ICE. Our taxpayer dollars must not be used to murder and terrorize our communities!
☎️ 202-998-6094 ☎️ pic.twitter.com/h3i7iMvZPD
— National Nurses United (@NationalNurses) January 27, 2026
Ahead of a possible government shutdown at the end of the week, the US Senate is set to consider a legislative package that includes six appropriations bills, including a $64.4 billion DHS funding bill that contains $10 billion for ICE. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has said Democrats won't provide the votes Republicans need to advance the appropriations package if the DHS bill is included.
Members of the Senate Democratic caucus are demanding that the DHS funding be stripped from the broader appropriations package and considered on its own, along with concrete reforms to ICE.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a close ally of union nurses, put forward a series of demands on Monday, including repeal of the $75 billion ICE funding that Republicans and President Donald Trump approved last summer, unmasking of ICE agents, and immediate removal of federal immigration agents from Minnesota and Maine.
"ICE is out of control, ignoring the law and our Constitution,” said Sanders. “Congress must vote NO on any additional funding for DHS."
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Medicare for All Backers Argue It's a Better Solution Than Whatever Trump Is Cooking Up
"Republicans have a million ideas regarding healthcare. Except one," said Sen. Bernie Sanders. "They will never acknowledge that healthcare is a human right—to be guaranteed to ALL."
Nov 25, 2025
As President Donald Trump postpones unveiling his supposed plan to tackle soaring US healthcare costs—reportedly after pushback from congressional Republicans—Medicare for All advocates have renewed calls for shifting to a single-payer system.
"Republicans have a million ideas regarding healthcare. Except one," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with Democrats, said on social media Monday afternoon. "They will never acknowledge that healthcare is a human right—to be guaranteed to ALL."
The union National Nurses United also called for Medicare for All on Monday, pointing to a recent West Health/Gallup poll that found 47% of US adults are worried they won't be able to afford healthcare next year, the highest level since they began tracking in 2021.
"The urgency around this is real," West Health president Timothy Lash told NBC News. "When you look at the economic strain that is on families right now, even if healthcare prices didn't rise, the costs are rising elsewhere, which only exacerbates the problem."
Over objections from progressives, including Sanders, a small group of Senate Democrats earlier this month agreed to help GOP lawmakers end the longest federal government shutdown in US history in exchange for just the promise of a mid-December vote on extending Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies to help over 20 million Americans who face skyrocketing premiums.
Citing unnamed White House officials, MS NOW reported Sunday that Trump was set to introduce the Healthcare Price Cuts Act to combat what the sources called "surprise premium hikes" as soon as Monday.
"The plan would also eliminate 'zero-premium' subsidies currently offered under the ACA, intending to stop 'ghost beneficiaries,' a frequent Republican concern about alleged fraudulent policy recipients, by requiring a small minimum payment as a means to verify eligibility to receive benefits," according to the outlet.
"The nascent plan also features a deposit program that would incentivize lower-premium options on the ACA exchange," MS NOW continued. "For individuals who downgrade coverage, the difference in coverage costs would be distributed to a 'Health Savings Account' provided with taxpayer dollars."
However, as Politico detailed Monday, also citing unnamed sources, "Trump's healthcare plan is in limbo after pushback from Republicans who were caught off guard by the president's forthcoming proposal—questioning, in particular, whether it would include additional abortion restrictions."
As parts of Trump's proposal continued to leak in the absence of its formal introduction, the American Prospect's Ryan Cooper and David Dayen wrote Tuesday that "all told, there's a good chance that Democrats will accept this offer, or something like it, as the best they're likely to get for the time being."
"If they are ever in power again, they can fix the ACA permanently, and avoid the danger of subsidies expiring (as the Prospect advocated back in 2021). But it's quite revealing as to the total bankruptcy of the Republican Party when it comes to healthcare policy," the duo added. "The GOP will flinch from more than doubling health insurance premiums—at least if middle-class people and up are the most affected—but only if they can also make the insurance worse, and make poor people pay more."
Last week, in a pair of op-eds and a letter to Democratic lawmakers, Sanders argued that "at a time when the Republicans have been forced to finally talk about the healthcare crisis facing our country, it is essential that the Democratic Caucus unify behind a set of commonsense policies that will make healthcare more affordable and accessible."
He called for not only extending the ACA tax credits, but also repealing Trump and congressional Republicans' $1 trillion in cuts to the ACA and Medicaid; expanding Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing; cutting prescription drug costs by requiring pharmaceutical companies to charge no more for medications in the United States than they do in Europe or Canada; investing in expanding primary healthcare; and banning stock buybacks and dividends, and restricting CEO compensation.
Although Medicare for All lacks majority support in the Democratic Caucus, Sanders—the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions—also emphasized his belief that it remains the ideal long-term solution. He reintroduced the Medicare for All Act in April with Democratic Reps. Pramila Jayapal (Wash.) and Debbie Dingell (Mich.).
Other single-payer advocates have also seized on current concerns and debates about the ACA. In a column for Truthdig last Thursday, Conor Lynch wrote that "with Republicans spotlighting the greed, corruption, and inefficiency of US healthcare, progressive Democrats have an opening to take Medicare for All off the back burner and renew the push for a comprehensive overhaul."
"The fact that Republicans are calling out insurance companies for their profiteering shows how much the national mood has changed since the passage of the ACA," he continued. "With Republicans unable to offer anything but a return to an intolerable status quo ante, Democrats should make the case for moving beyond the broken status quo."
The previous week, CJ Mikkelsen, a retired firefighter and paramedic now leading a small nonprofit in Michigan, made the case in the Midland Daily News that "we need a system like every other country in the developed world has."
Mikkelsen shared some of his and his wife's health struggles and stressed the society-wide benefits: "Medicare for All would mean that everyone is covered for everything at all times. No more losing coverage because you’ve lost your job, want to go back to school, or are starting your own business. The last thing I want you to know about Medicare for All, and pay attention here—IT’S CHEAPER THAN WHAT WE'RE DOING NOW."
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'Put Working People First,' Says AFL-CIO Angered by Trump Agenda and Government Shutdown
"The labor movement's message to the administration is clear: Get to work. Fund the government. Fix the healthcare crisis."
Oct 01, 2025
The largest federation of labor unions in the United States called out President Donald Trump's administration on Wednesday after a government shutdown began at midnight following failed votes on competing congressional funding bills.
"The federal government is shutting down right now because President Trump and his administration chose chaos and pain over responsible governing," declared American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) president Liz Shuler in a statement.
"Now," she said, "countless jobs, the essential government services we all rely on, and the economy powered by our workforce are in jeopardy—all because the administration wants to take one more swing at wrecking the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and throwing working people off our healthcare."
Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress but need some Democratic support to advance most legislation to a final vote in the Senate. While the GOP wanted to pass a House-approved stopgap bill, Democrats fought to extend expiring ACA subsidies and reverse Medicaid cuts in Trump's so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or HR 1.
"It's not Washington politicians who are at risk here—it's working people just like us."
"Hundreds of thousands of federal workers are being locked out and stand to lose the paychecks their families depend on," said Shuler. "Federal contractors, including custodians and cafeteria workers, won't have the assurance of back pay. It's not Washington politicians who are at risk here—it's working people just like us, more than 80% of whom live outside DC, and 30% are veterans."
Federal workers deemed essential continue working during a shutdown, and those deemed nonessential are furloughed; none receive pay until the government reopens. The Trump administration has threatened to use the shutdown to continue the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) effort to gut the federal bureaucracy.
"These are the people who get our Social Security checks out on time, keep our food and water safe, care for our veterans, and protect us at airports and during natural disasters," Shuler noted. "Under the administration's Project 2025/DOGE agenda, federal workers have been fired, rehired, and fired again. They've been stripped of their collective bargaining rights and union contracts."
"Now, President Trump is shutting down the government, using federal workers as pawns and threatening to illegally fire them—all to avoid fixing the mounting healthcare cost crisis that will hurt millions of Americans," she concluded. "The labor movement's message to the administration is clear: Get to work. Fund the government. Fix the healthcare crisis. Put working people first."
Leaders of AFL-CIO affiliates shared similar messages on Wednesday, including American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) national president Everett Kelley, who stressed that "when the government shuts down, American families pay the price."
"Congress must stop playing politics with the livelihoods of federal workers and the communities they serve, end this shutdown immediately, and stop holding workers hostage," he said. "These employees should be able to do their jobs free of political interference. Instead, these employees and the services they provide are being thrown into chaos because Congress refuses to act."
"Making matters worse," Kelley noted, "President Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought are threatening to illegally fire mass numbers of federal employees during the government shutdown to inflict further pain on communities and workers across the nation—an action we are already challenging in court."
In the lead-up to the shutdown late Tuesday, AFGE and another AFL-CIO affiliate, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), filed a federal lawsuit in hopes of protecting government workers from mass firings.
Mary Turner, president of National Nurses United, another AFL-CIO affiliate, said Tuesday that "the Trump administration's only desire appears to be to placate and please the billionaire class and to declare war on our country's own people. This was abundantly evident in the passage of HR 1, which gave corporations and the ultrarich huge tax breaks while stealing healthcare coverage from 16 million people."
"When the Republicans passed HR 1, they voted to upend an already fragile system," Turner added. "If Congress doesn't act immediately to reverse these cuts, our patients will suffer from going without care. They will have to ration their prescriptions and face bankruptcy just to see a doctor. Experts predict more than 50,000 people will die unnecessarily each year because of these cuts."
In a letter sent to federal lawmakers before the shutdown, the nurses had urged them to vote for the Democratic measure and "address the looming healthcare crisis that Republican congressional leadership created."
The union also emphasized that "by refusing to govern, Republicans bear full responsibility for the devastating consequences that would ensue if the government is shut down."
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Organizers Ramp Up Push for Oct. 18 No Kings Actions Against 'Wannabe Dictator' Trump
"The American people are fed up with Trump's pathetic attempt at wearing the crown," said one event organizer.
Sep 08, 2025
The coalition of progressive organizations that helped organize the nationwide "No Kings" protests this summer are ramping up for a potentially even bigger event in the fall.
The organizations pushed out new publicity on Monday about the "No Kings 2" demonstrations scheduled to take place across the country on October 18. The planned demonstrations come as the Trump administration is accelerating its plans to send the National Guard into US cities and continues to send masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents into immigrant communities.
Sponsors of the No Kings 2 events include ACLU, American Federation of Teachers, Common Defense, 50501, Human Rights Campaign, Indivisible, League of Conservation Voters, MoveOn, National Nurses United, Public Citizen, SEIU, and United We Dream Action.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin said that he expected this fall's No Kings sequel to be even bigger than the first one, which drew an estimated 5 million people into the streets across more than 2,000 events. Levin also outlined the importance of hitting a critical threshold for anti-Trump demonstrations.
"Experts in authoritarianism tell us, based on research, that you need 3.5% of the population engaged, in a sustained way, to successfully push back against an authoritarian regime," he said. "In the American context, that's about 11 or 12 million people. For No Kings 1, we got about halfway there. And we have funneled a lot of those people into our trainings around strategic noncooperation. But we need to come together again."
Jacob Thomas, a United States Armed Forces veteran and communications director for "No Kings 2" sponsor Common Defense, said in a statement that a common theme that has united the organizations is the fight against US President Donald Trump's authoritarian ambitions.
"We must all do our part to fight back against his authoritarianism and military occupation of cities," he said. "We cannot allow a wannabe dictator to destroy our democracy, gut veteran healthcare, keep people from accessing the ballot box, and tank our economy. We must all join together in solidarity to fight back and secure our freedoms."
Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson said the protests were necessary because Trump's actions were direct attacks on the American dream of "freedom afforded to all people."
"Since taking office, he has tried to erode our freedoms and amass power for himself, censoring history, undermining our voting rights, defying the rule of law, and stripping people of basic rights simply because of who they are or who they love," she said. "But this country does not and will never have a king. The power of the people is and will continue to be greater than the man obsessed with keeping power for himself."
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, ticked off a list of grievances against the president to argue that mass protests against him are needed now more than ever.
"In less than 10 months of his presidency, Trump has ticked off every box of a king's playbook," she said. "He has plastered his face on banners across DC, weaponized National Guard troops against our communities, disappeared people or thrown them out of the country without due process, attempted to sabotage elections and erode our democracy, and trivialized the power of Congress and the courts. He has violated the Constitution over and over again. The American people are fed up with Trump's pathetic attempt at wearing the crown."
The first set of "No Kings" protests came on Trump's 79th birthday, on the same day he put on a massive military parade that cost $30 million to produce.
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'Blatant Attempt to Bust Our Unions': Trump Admin Moves to Gut Labor Protections at VA
"This administration wants to break the spirit of working people in this country, but we will not be broken," said National Nurses United.
Aug 07, 2025
Days after the Trump administration said in federal court that it would not move ahead with its plan to end collective bargaining agreements for more than 400,000 government employees until litigation on the issue concluded, the largest federal employees union on Wednesday pledged to fight back against the secretary of veterans affairs' decision to move forward with slashing labor protections.
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins notified the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and several other unions that he was implementing an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, which required the termination of collective bargaining agreements for agencies whose missions are related to national security.
Labor protections, including those that ensure work disputes can be resolved by a neutral party and that union leaders can take part in contract negotiations, would be eliminated for more than 400,000 employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) under the executive order.
Collins said in a letter to AFGE leaders that police officers, firefighters, and security guards would be exempt from the order ending collective bargaining rights, but that the VA "no longer recognizes AFGE as the exclusive representative of any other VA bargaining unit employee," including doctors, nurses, benefits specialists, lawyers, dentists, mental health specialists, and other employees.
A panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last Friday ruled that the administration could move forward with the executive order directing federal agencies to end collective bargaining with federal unions including the AFGE, but the three judges on the panel said they came to that conclusion in part because the White House had said it wouldn't end the labor agreements until the court case was resolved.
Trump has claimed the order is essential to protect national security, suggesting union protections have gotten in the way of maintaining "a responsive and accountable civil service."
"Protecting America's national security is a core constitutional duty, and President Trump refuses to let union obstruction interfere with his efforts to protect Americans and our national interests," reads the executive order signed in March, which quickly became the subject of a lawsuit filed by unions including the AFGE, National Nurses United (NNU), and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
The plaintiffs have argued that the order will impact agencies whose missions are not directly related to national security, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services.
The AFGE also noted Wednesday that Collins' move is inconsistent with guidance from the Office of Personnel Management, which instructs agencies "not to terminate any [collective bargaining agreements] until the conclusion of litigation."
Everett Kelley, national president of the AFGE, said the "decision to rip up the negotiated union contract for majority of [the VA's] workforce is another clear example of retaliation against AFGE members for speaking out against the illegal, anti-worker, and anti-veteran policies of this administration."
VA employees, said Kelley, spoke out against Trump's plan to cut 83,000 jobs at the agency "and consistently educated the American people about how private, for-profit veteran healthcare is more expensive and results in worse outcomes for veterans."
Congressional Republicans have pushed for the privatization of veterans' healthcare, advocating for the Veterans' ACCESS Act, which has been framed as a bill that would "reduce wait times and empower veterans through online self-scheduling," as Rolling Stone reported recently, but would push veterans toward seeking care in the private sector. Collins has also pledged to bring more "choice" to veterans seeking healthcare.
"We don't apologize for protecting veteran healthcare and will continue to fight for our members and the veterans they care for," said Kelley.
National Nurses United (NNU), which represents about 16,000 nurses who work at 23 facilities operated by the VA and whose contracts were also terminated by Collins, said the effort "to erase our collective bargaining agreements is a blatant attempt to bust our unions and to silence the nurses and workers who are standing on the frontlines to protect our country's fundamental institutions."
"We know this administration is hellbent on silencing nurses and other VA workers to steamroll the destruction of the VA. This administration is marching toward the privatization of veteran care so they can move billions of taxpayer money out of the VA system, which is proven to provide excellent veteran-centric care, and into the coffers of private health care corporations run by billionaires," said NNU in a statement.
The union said it would continue to challenge Trump's executive order in court, calling it an "unconstitutional retaliation against the unions for engaging in activity protected by the First Amendment."
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said that "every American who cares about the fundamental freedoms of working people should be outraged by this attack on workers' ability to speak out and stand up at the VA."
"It's clear this is explicit retaliation against VA workers whose unions are standing up to the administration's illegal actions in court and in the streets," said Shuler. "The Trump administration may think they can rip up our contracts and silence anyone who pushes back against their unlawful and anti-worker actions, but we aren't going anywhere. The labor movement will continue to fight this all-out assault on workers with everything we have—and we're calling on Americans across this country to join us."
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Medicare for All, Says Sanders, Would Show American People 'Government Is Listening to Them'
"The goal of the current administration and their billionaire buddies is to pile on endless cuts," said one nurse and union leader. "Even on our hardest days, we won't stop fighting for Medicare for All."
Apr 29, 2025
On Tuesday, Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Democratic Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Debbie Dingell of Michigan reintroduced the Medicare for All Act, re-upping the legislative quest to enact a single-payer healthcare system even as the bill faces little chance of advancing in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives or Senate.
Hundreds of nurses, healthcare providers, and workers from across the country joined the lawmakers for a press conference focused on the bill's reintroduction in front of the Capitol on Tuesday.
"We have the radical idea of putting healthcare dollars into healthcare, not into profiteering or bureaucracy," said Sanders during the press conference. "A simple healthcare system, which is what we are talking about, substantially reduces administrative costs, but it would also make life a lot easier, not just for patients, but for nurses" and other healthcare providers, he continued.
"So let us stand together," Sanders told the crowd. "Let us do what the American people want and let us transform this country. And when we pass Medicare for All, it's not only about improving healthcare for all our people—it's doing something else. It's telling the American people that, finally, the American government is listening to them."
Under Medicare for All, the government would pay for all healthcare services, including dental, vision, prescription drugs, and other care.
"It is a travesty when 85 million people are uninsured or underinsured and millions more are drowning in medical debt in the richest nation on Earth," said Jayapal in a statement on Tuesday.
In 2020, a study in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet found that a single-payer program like Medicare for All would save Americans more than $450 billion and would likely prevent 68,000 deaths every year. That same year, the Congressional Budget Office found that a single-payer system that resembles Medicare for All would yield some $650 billion in savings in 2030.
Members of National Nurses United (NNU), the nation's largest union of registered nurses, were also at the press conference on Tuesday.
In a statement, the group highlighted that the bill comes at a critical time, given GOP-led threats to programs like Medicaid.
"The goal of the current administration and their billionaire buddies is to pile on endless cuts and attacks so that we become too demoralized and overwhelmed to move forward," said Bonnie Castillo, registered nurse and executive director of NNU. "Even on our hardest days, we won't stop fighting for Medicare for All."
Per Sanders' office, the legislation has 104 co-sponsors in the House and 16 in the Senate, which is an increase from the previous Congress.
A poll from Gallup released in 2023 found that 7 in 10 Democrats support a government-run healthcare system. The poll also found that across the political spectrum, 57% of respondents believe the government should ensure all people have healthcare coverage.
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What Trump’s Covid-19 Malfeasance Warns Us About the Next Epidemics
With confirmation hearings soon to begin for Kennedy and other healthcare department heads with similar views about to begin, the threat of future pandemics in an administration with a disastrous track record is another reason to urge their defeat.
Jan 15, 2025
One barely noticed pledge by President-elect Donald Trump during the 2024 campaign appeared in a May Time magazine interview that offers an especially ominous warning about Trump 2.0. If he won a new term, Trump said, he would “probably” disband the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response policy established by Congress in 2022.
Fast forward to his new nominees, especially Secretary of Health and Human Services anti-vax conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has said he would pause National Institute of Health infectious disease and drug development research for eight years. As the saying goes, we might have a problem.
With confirmation hearings soon to begin for Kennedy and other healthcare department heads with similar views about to begin, the threat of future pandemics in an administration with a disastrous track record is another reason to urge their defeat.
If the U.S. had the same death rate as Australia, The New York Times later reported, about 900,000 American lives would have been saved.
The 2022 law was prompted by the worst pandemic in a century, that has killed over 1.2 million Americans. The law’s roots were in a pandemic global health security office former President Barack Obama set in the National Security Council. It followed Obama’s experiences with the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009 that killed up to 575,000 people globally, including more than 12,000 in the U.S., and the 2014 Ebola outbreak that claimed thousands of lives in West Africa and provoked a major scare in the U.S.
Trump eliminated the office in 2018, suggesting, The Associated Press reported, “that he did not see the threat of pandemics in the same way that many experts in the field did.” In March, 2020, former pandemic office director Beth Cameron wrote she was “mystified” by the unit’s shutdown “leaving the country less prepared for pandemics… all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm blaze.” Trump officials insisted they were fully prepared. Facts on the ground tell a different story.
In December 2019 the first reports emerged of patients in China suffering symptoms of an unknown pneumonia-like illness, drawing reminders of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, SARS Cov-1. By early January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) began referring to the outbreak as a 2019 Novel Coronavirus, soon to be renamed Covid-19.
With infections spreading in Asia, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in late January reported the first U.S. cases. The first U.S. deaths occurred in January 2020. By mid-March, when Cameron’s op-ed appeared, the WHO confirmed more than 118,000 Covid cases and 4,291 deaths.
Australia, which had a similar profile of libertarian individualism and a right-wing prime minister in 2020, created a bipartisan response with opposition Labor Party and state leaders, and medical officers out front. They quickly subsidized production and distribution of masks, prioritized testing and contact tracing, and understood some shutdowns were necessary. If the U.S. had the same death rate as Australia, The New York Times later reported, about 900,000 American lives would have been saved.
Trump: ‘It’s Going to Be Fine’
The first year of Covid-19 was critical to establishing the protocols and public health protections to confront the crisis and reduce the deaths and suffering. But, due to widespread government failures, infections spread like wildfires. Yet the Trump administration was glacially slow to react. In his first public statement January 22, 2020, Trump declared, “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
In multiple comments tracked by Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), Trump downplayed the danger. February 2020: “Looks like by April… when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away,” “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus,” “We’re going very substantially down, not up,” and, “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
Due to Trump’s malfeasance; promotion of misinformation, including false miracle cures; and actively discouraging government and community safety steps to slow the spread, Covid-19 exploded.
As Trump’s term ended on January 20, 2021, the U.S. recorded 25 million cases, and over 400,000 deaths.
Embracing the sluggish signals from Washington, hospitals stalled on adopting critical safety protocols and were ill-prepared for the flood of desperately ill patients that led to cascading deaths, with bodies piling up in makeshift morgues or refrigerated trucks outside hospital doors. It was made worse by inadequate isolation of infected patients and shortages of ventilators and proper protective equipment for overwhelmed nurses and other healthcare workers who paid a horrific price with thousands of deaths and many leaving due to unwillingness to work in unsafe conditions.
Trump’s failures continued for months. At a White House press conference on April 3, Trump eroded a new tepid CDC guidance people consider wearing masks, as other countries were now requiring to reduce transmission of the virus, by adding he would not do so.
Trump’s position, New York University sociologist Eric Klinenberg recalled, “undermined it,” suggesting “to anyone in his world that wears a mask, it’s cowardly, weak, feminine, so no one’s going to wear masks. [It] becomes clear to everyone in the Republican establishment that bearing your face is the way to show solidarity and support to the president,” reinforcing a partisan political divide on not just masks but soon all public health measures.
In late April 2020, as the U.S. death toll passed 60,000, Trump said, “This is going away.” In May, amid 80,000 deaths, Trump said, “We have met the moment, and we have prevailed.” In June, with 110,000 dead Americans, Trump said, “It is dying out, it’s going to fade away.”
On August 31, with the death count passing 180,000, Trump said, “We’ve done a great job in Covid, but we don’t get the credit” blaming a “fake news media conspiracy.” For months, Trump demanded an end to steps some states were implementing to limit infections. As Trump’s term ended on January 20, 2021, the U.S. recorded 25 million cases, and over 400,000 deaths.
National Nurses United (NNU), one of the first to respond to prior pandemics during H1N1 in 2009 and Ebola in 2014, had gained valuable experience. By early January, 2020, “before most people in the U.S. had even heard of Covid-19,” as The New York Times noted, NNU began mobilizing and aggressively pushing employers, government elected officials, and health and regulatory agencies to implement decisive safety actions. In contrast to public agencies, NNU launched multiple public endeavors from rallies to marches, vigils, pickets, and other collective action, including strikes, to demand optimal protections for nurses, other healthcare workers, patients, and the broader public.
Employers took their lead from Trump and the federal agencies he influenced, including the CDC and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) that continually eroded safety guidelines and workplace regulations. Hospitals, observed NNU executive director Bonnie Castillo, RN, “took a gamble relative to how much to have and how much to be prepared. And the CDC came out with guidelines shifting, commensurate to what the hospitals are complaining of. The lower standard is cheaper. So they just kept lowering and lowering, all the way down to bandannas. They’re looking at us like fodder.”
The racist Legacy of Trump’s Covid-19 Malfeasance
Trump’s mismanagement and indifference to who was most harmed proved catastrophic for communities of color, including a large percentage who were essential workers in transit, food processing, service industries, and healthcare.
Early in the pandemic, Trump sought to shift blame from his administration to China, repeatedly referring to Covid-19 as “the China virus,” though by April the U.S., with 4% of the world’s population, accounted for 17% of global Covid-19 deaths. Trump’s racist scapegoating ignited a sharp rise in anti-Asian hate speech and physical assaults.
His future HHS nominee Kennedy was among those adding fuel to the fire. At a 2023 New York press event Kennedy claimed “there is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately… The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
“We’re being treated like we don’t matter and we’re dispensable.”
Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) healthcare workers subsequently reported a rise in racist incidents, both in hospital settings and in their daily lives. Twice as many verbal and physical assaults were directed at women. “We must unite to challenge anti-Asian violence, harassment, and racism,” said University of California San Diego RN Dahlia Tayag at a statewide California Nurses Association protest against ongoing anti-Asian hate crimes.
The disproportionate racial impact was evident in Covid=19’s devastating toll on Filipino healthcare workers. Kansas City RN Celia Yap Banago, one of many RNs who had pressed her hospital to fix inadequate protections, was one of the first RNs to die in April 2020. “We were being told we’re not allowed to wear masks because it’s going to scare our patients,” said Jenn Caldwell, RN.
By August 2023 when the government stopped reporting healthcare-worker Covid-19 data, 5,753 healthcare workers, including 501 RNs, had died of Covid-19. In a June interview, Zenei Triunfo-Cortez, RN, CNA/NNOC’s first Filipina president, noted that nurses call for help from Trump and Congress “fell on deaf ears… Our employers are banking on (CDC) guidelines, which have been watered down… We’re being treated like we don’t matter and we’re dispensable.”
The Racial Disparity of Infections and Death
Centuries of structural racism accelerate the disproportionate impact of any crisis, including pandemics. As Trump was continuing to downplay the tsunami of infections and deaths, and discouraging safety procedures, the racial impact escalated. Black Chicagoans, 30% of city residents, comprised 72% of the Covid-19 deaths. Black Michigan residents, under 15% of the population, accounted for 40% of the deaths. Milwaukee African Americans, 26% of the population, totaled 70% of Covid-19 deaths. Similar rates were evident across the country, from states with large Black populations like North and South Carolina, to those with smaller percentages, such as Nevada and Connecticut.
Latinos were 80% of the first people admitted for care at San Francisco’s large public hospital and in Latino San Jose neighborhoods. Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islander infection and death rates were also higher in California. In March 2020, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham cited “incredible spikes” in Navajo Nation. Two months later, Navajo Nation still had higher Covid-19 infection cases per capita than much more publicized, hard-hit New York City.
Columnist Jamelle Bouie linked the disparities to “longstanding structural inequities.” Systemic racism in healthcare had a long history, evident in less access to medical institutions and caregivers, provider treatment biases, lower rates of costly health coverage, housing segregation, and higher concentration in polluted neighborhoods. Hospitals in Black neighborhoods were far more likely to close than in mostly white areas, a National Institutes of Health study found.
“What it meant to be an essential worker was to be deemed expendable.”
Black and Latino workers were also far more likely to hold “essential” jobs. Many were concentrated in lower paid jobs often forced to keep working due to economic need or employer pressure, including in food services, grocery and drug stores, and poultry and other meat processing plants. The Guardian reported alarmingly high transit worker death rates among bus and subway drivers, mechanics, and maintenance workers in New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Washington D.C., and other major cities.
In September 2020, the CDC drew condemnation for reportedly soft-pedaling safety precautions due to political interference at a South Dakota meatpacking plant. All these factors resulted in workers of color having less economic ability or opportunity to shelter or work from home, and less access to safety measures, from masks to social distancing on the job where they risked constant exposure.
It also reinforced a class chasm with “a lot of professional and more affluent people who could afford to make the kind of sacrifices this public emergency called for who were able to protect themselves, able to sustain a level of comfort that other people in America were not,” says sociologist Klinenberg.
“It wasn’t like when we called them essential, we said, because you’re essential we’re going to honor you, we’re giving you masks, you get the best access to healthcare in the world, and here’s a bonus from all of us and our forever gratitude. What it meant to be an essential worker was to be deemed expendable. And it wasn’t just you, you got exposed to the virus, then you were more likely to go back home to your family who also got exposed to the virus. So you’ve got these neighborhoods throughout the country where there’s a lot of working class people who are getting exposed and they have higher mortality,” he added.
“Covid was kind of a search light that showed us everyone, everywhere we had studiously looked away from,” writer and activist Naomi Klein observed. “Suddenly we’re forced to think about the way in which our culture produces disposable people, whether they are working in elder care facilities when there’s suddenly Covid outbreaks, or the poultry plants [that] were Covid hotspots. Places where you never see a camera because we’re not supposed to think about, [like] what’s going on in prisons.” Klein cited “the myth of neoliberalism, like we are just individual people and families, and we don’t owe anything to each other. Covid said that wasn’t the case because you can’t just treat individuals, you have to treat a body of enmeshed individuals.”
Workers and unions had to fight their employers and public agencies under Trump to protect their members and the public. Union pressure, Castillo told The New York Times, moved some hospitals to act. In the first six months alone, NNU “staged more than 350 socially distanced protests, including two vigils in front of the White House for the nurses who died from the virus.”
Though Trump’s first term ended with the rollout of a Covid-19 vaccine, lasting damage had been done with his encouragement of opposition to critical community protections from masking to social isolation to needed closures to reduce the spread of the virus, and his sympathy for an escalating anti-vax movement. NNU early in 2021 characterized the Trump administration’s response as “one of denial and abandonment.”
Going forward, with Trump nominating people with similar views opposing the importance of a robust approach to public health, including full preparedness and action on sure-to-come future epidemics, there is ample cause for concern. A new avian flu’s first U.S. death has already occurred. Measles, polio, and other illnesses could mushroom, especially with health officials hostile to vaccines in charge of health agencies with vaccination rates already declining.
With confirmation hearings approaching, The New York Times this week reported the alarming vaccination drop “creating new pockets of students no longer protected by herd immunity [with]… now an estimated 280,000 kindergartners without documented vaccination against measles, an increase of some 100,000 children from before the pandemic.” Resurgence of polio, once virtually eradicated, is also a threat.
Rising temperatures from climate change mean that bacteria not only grow faster but are also associated with increased antibiotic resistance, facilitating the rise of new deadly pandemics. Factor in expected cuts in federal agencies and reduced enforcement of workplace and community protections by an administration more friendly to corporate demands for cuts in regulations.
Over the coming days and years, our vigilance and mass action will be critical to protecting public health.
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Jayapal, Sanders Offer Answer to Elon Musk's Healthcare Cost Question
"The most efficiently run healthcare systems in the world," said National Nurses United, "have been proven time and time again to be single-payer systems."
Dec 05, 2024
Two of the United States' most outspoken critics of the for-profit health system welcomed billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's criticism of the country's sky-high healthcare spending—and suggested that Musk, a potential Cabinet member in the incoming Trump administration, join the call for Medicare for All.
A social media post by Musk drew the attention of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who reintroduced legislation to expand Medicare coverage to every American last year and have long called for the for-profit healthcare system to be replaced by a government-run program, or single-payer system, like those in every other wealthy country in the world.
"Shouldn't the American people be getting getting their money's worth?" asked Musk, posting a graph from the nonpartisan Peter G. Peterson Foundation that showed how per capita administrative healthcare costs in the U.S. reached $1,055 in 2020—hundreds of dollars more than countries including Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
"Yes," said Sanders, repeating statistics he has frequently shared while condemning the country's $4.5 trillion health system in which private, for-profit health insurance companies increasingly refuse to pay for healthcare services and Americans pay an average of $1,142 in out-of-pocket expenses each year.
"We waste hundreds of billions a year on healthcare administrative expenses that make insurance CEOs and wealthy stockholders incredibly rich while 85 million Americans go uninsured or underinsured," the senator added. "Healthcare is a human right. We need Medicare for All."
Jayapal added that she has "a solution" to exorbitant healthcare costs in the U.S.: "It's called Medicare for All."
Musk has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to lead a new federal agency that he wants to create called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Sanders has expressed support for some of the agency's mission, saying its plan to "cut wasteful expenditures" could be put to use at the Department of Defense, which has repeatedly failed audits of its annual spending.
But Sanders has sharply criticized the economic system and business practices that have helped make Musk the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $343.8 billion.
Another progressive, David Sirota of The Lever, suggested last month that DOGE could be used to eliminate the nation's vast health insurance bureaucracy and replace it with Medicare for All, pointing to a 2020 report from the Republican-controlled Congressional Budget Office that showed that a government-run healthcare program would save the country an estimated $650 billion each year.
"Such a system could achieve this in part because Medicare's 2% administrative costs are so much lower than the 17% administrative costs of the bureaucratic, profit-extracting private health insurance industry," wrote Sirota.
Musk drew the attention of Medicare for All advocates amid online discussion about the greed of for-profit insurance giants.
The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Wednesday prompted discussion about widespread anger over the U.S. healthcare system, and following public outcry, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield on Thursday backtracked on a decision to stop paying for surgical anesthesia if a procedure goes beyond a certain time limit. The American Society of Anesthesiologists said that if Anthem stopped fully paying doctors who provide pain management for complicated surgeries, patients would be left paying hundreds or thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs.
National Nurses United, which advocates for a government-run healthcare system, urged Musk and others who support the broadly popular proposal to "join the movement to win Medicare for All."
"The most efficiently run healthcare systems in the world," said the group, "have been proven time and time again to be single-payer systems."
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