Cuts to our nation's public service programs are premature death sentences for many of our nation's patients. As an ICU nurse of more than 30 years at a safety net hospital in Brooklyn, New York, I know this to be true. My hospital is a Level I Trauma Center, the only pediatric trauma center in Brooklyn. The last time there was a shooting nearby, the patients came to us. I care for children and adults with serious diagnoses like intracranial bleeding or tumors. My facility also handles the most births in New York annually, including high-risk pregnancies.
At my hospital, Medicaid and Medicare patients are 84% of all admitted patients, and 75% of patient service revenue (a primary source of hospital income) comes from these programs.
So, what would happen without Medicaid? My patients will be forced to forgo lifesaving care, and they will die. My hospital could face closure entirely or the shuttering of units or services. When patients need open heart surgery, will our facility be able to afford the ECMO machines to keep their hearts and lungs functioning? Every second counts for our trauma patients who won't survive transfer.
The same is true across the country, especially in rural and other underserved communities, where hospitals are already struggling to stay open.
And Medicaid is only one public program under attack.
We're also seeing threats to Social Security, Medicare, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and public health programs run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Without these programs, millions of people will suffer and die.
As patient advocates, registered nurses know the public relies on us to stand up for their health and safety. So, hundreds of nurses from National Nurses United, the country's largest union of registered nurses, are converging in Washington, DC, on April 29 to stand face-to-face with our representatives and demand that cuts to public services stop. Now.
Nurses have been incensed to see such inhumane disregard by the current administration and Republicans in Congress for the lives of people across America. To fund tax breaks for billionaires, Congress has targeted cuts to Medicaid, which provides health care to 72 million people.
Social Security, which provides economic security for 1 in 5 Americans, has also been targeted. Elon Musk and his henchmen have plans to close Social Security Administration offices across the country, and they plan to slash 7,000 agency staff, including 2,800 who have already left (even though the agency's staffing levels are already at a 50-year low).
Meanwhile, phone lines and websites that seniors depend on are already crashing.
Our seniors −our parents, our grandparents − have paid into this program for their entire careers, and millions of them rely on Social Security for 90% or more of their income.
The current administration and the people behind Project 2025 are not trying to find "waste" in the government, and their goals go beyond tax breaks for billionaires.
They are trying to undermine our public services so they can say, "Look, they don't work! We need to privatize them."
Every day, it's becoming more obvious that the current administration does not believe in an interdependent society where we share responsibilities for one another. Ultimately, this administration cares about increasing the wealth of billionaires and corporations, not about the collective health of all people.
They would prefer to simply eliminate public services and benefits entirely. The problem? Programs and agencies such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the VHA are popular with voters because they tangibly help people live better lives.
So instead of running the programs with no profit motive and owned by the people, they want to give private corporations lucrative government contracts to run them so that they can take their cut.
The first step in justifying handing over control of a public asset to the private sector is "breaking" the public asset - in this case, making severe cuts to the agencies' staff and funding, on top of policies that disrupt its work, so that it can no longer function properly.
As registered nurses who deeply understand how the health of everyone is interconnected and heavily dependent on systemic factors, we must fight the destruction and privatization of these programs and agencies. Our congressional representatives must feel the urgency this week, when nurses from across the nation take time away from our jobs and families to demand they stop these cuts and attacks - now. All our lives depend on it.
Nancy Hagans, RN, is president of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) and National Nurses United (NNU), the largest U.S. union of registered nurses. She works in the ICU at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York.