Workers can strike back with the New York Health Act

Dr. Damien Archbold is an anesthesiologist at Elmhurst Hospital and a Doctors Council SEIU delegate. 

Carter Myers-Brown aptly describes how industry-sponsored authoritarians have pushed workers into a corner and intend to land the final blow on public health (“The final blow to American healthcare,” The Chief, Commentary, Aug. 29).

Have hope: New Yorkers aren’t defenseless. We have a muscular piece of legislation — the New York Health Act (NYHA) — that gets workers out of the corner and unleashes our power to fight back.

The NYHA would establish a single-payer health system in New York. Every resident would be covered, regardless of job status. It would end the stranglehold of employer-sponsored insurance, giving workers leverage that’s been stripped away for decades. No more fear of striking and losing coverage. No more job lock. No more bosses dangling health benefits to keep us quiet.

United Healthcare and Emblem, Eric Adams and the MLC have brokered a new health plan for 750,000 municipal workers and their families. United Healthcare is notorious for enriching CEOs and shareholders by denying and delaying care. The public response to a United Healthcare CEO being shot in broad daylight in Manhattan unbottled widespread disgust at health industry practices.

Now is the moment: municipal workers must demand that their union officials stop cutting backroom deals and instead force Albany to pass the NYHA.

The numbers are clear. A 2018 RAND study projected the NYHA would save New Yorkers an average of $2,800 a year while creating 180,000 jobs. It would replace premiums and out-of-pocket costs with a progressive tax, relieve employers of managing benefits and let health workers focus on patients instead of billing codes. Even Warren Buffett called healthcare costs the “tapeworm” of the American economy. The NYHA is the treatment.

As a doctor at a Queens public hospital since 2019, I see how chronic understaffing and defunding affects patients every day. One ER physician covering 50 patients. Surgeries delayed because of lack of capacity. Stretchers stacked in hallways. Moral injury and constant staff turnover. During the COVID19 surge, public hospitals - already weakened by decades of closures and privatization - were pushed past the brink. Patients who relied on NYC Health + Hospitals suffered and died disproportionately.

Now, the Adams administration, District Council 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido, and the United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew want to lock municipal workers into a new 5-year United Healthcare/Emblem plan claiming that it would save the city $1 billion a year in municipal healthcare costs. They’ve promised “premium-free” coverage, but we all know how this works: the MLC works with the city to suppress wages to maintain the illusion of free benefits, then degrades those very benefits. Workers pay twice — once in stagnant wages, again in worse care.

This is the quiet bargain our union officials have struck: lower wages in exchange for healthcare that is increasingly segregated, separate and unequal, but keeps them in charge. 750,000 municipal workers and their families crowded into a fragmented and declining public system, while the 1 percent retreat to concierge doctors and tax-exempt “non-profit” health systems, who lobby Albany to keep the status quo. Unless we change how healthcare is funded, conditions for both workers and patients will only spiral downward.

That’s why we need the NYHA now.

Politicians tell us they won’t back the bill because the city’s largest unions don’t support it. Mulgrew’s and Garrido’s refusals give Albany cover to stall. Meanwhile, municipal workers endure stagnant wages, eroded benefits and health schemes engineered by for-profit insurers and city hall to keep workers under their thumb.

But rank-and-file workers aren’t powerless. We’ve already seen cracks in the old order. DC37 members pushed the union to endorse Zohran Mamdani ahead of the Democratic primary — proof that grassroots organizing can push ossified unions. Mamdani ran on affordability; municipal workers can’t afford rent and groceries because raises are traded off for healthcare.

Passing the NYHA would take healthcare off the bargaining table entirely. That would empower us to fight for what truly matters: raises that beat inflation, safe staffing, real workplace democracy, and a resilient public health system that serves every New Yorker as a provider and employer of choice — not of last resort.

The choice is clear. Accept industry-backed deals that sell out our families’ health, or demand a system designed for workers, patients and the public. If municipal workers reject the MLC’s plan and organize for the NYHA, we can strike a decisive blow against the tyrants and billionaires who use employer-sponsored health benefits to weaken and divide us.

It’s time for city workers to get off the ropes and strike back with the New York Health Act.