With 25 years in the health care field under her belt, Dionne Gary, a nurse and president of NUHHCE District 1199C/AFSCME, has seen it all. As someone who has worked everywhere from long-term care settings to the intensive care units of hospitals, she doesn’t frighten easily.
But what she’s seeing now as the government shutdown exceeds the one-month mark, and budget cuts from the disastrous “Big Beautiful Bill” begin to wreak havoc on the health care system, have her sounding the alarm.
“We’re really starting to be impacted,” says Gary. “We’re seeing folks being laid off. Positions being eliminated. Combining positions instead of hiring new people to make up for existing staffing shortages.”
As the president of NUHHCE District 1199C, Gary represents 8,500 health care workers who are the “backbone” of Philadelphia’s health care system — dieticians, licensed practical nurses, registered nurses, and more.
The shutdown was caused by the administration and its yes-men and women in Congress who chose to protect tax breaks for billionaires rather than lower health care costs. Gary says the fallout from this shutdown is starting to seriously harm Philadelphia’s health care system.
Take, for instance, long-term care facilities.
“Long term facilities are basically 100% funded through Medicaid,” Gray explains. “Many of these facilities are seeing the writing on the wall and preemptively making layoffs and service cuts because they know the funding will dry up next year.”
Gary is referring to the $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid including in the so-called Big Beautiful Bill.
Another aspect of these reckless cuts is the threat to workplace safety, especially, notes Gary, in the behavioral health field.
“You have to spend money to invest in the safety of these employees,” says Gary. “Front-line health care workers shouldn’t have to choose between workplace safety and getting paid fairly. It shouldn’t be an either or. It should be both.”
As if the toll taken on patient care and worker safety from the Big Beautiful Bill weren’t already dangerously high, the shutdown is only making things worse.
On Nov. 1, food assistance for more than 40 million Americans that is delivered through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, was scheduled to stop. Many of Philadelphia’s health care workers braced for that possibility.
“Many health care workers in Philadelphia rely on SNAP,” says Gary.
Thanks to court cases brought by states’ attorneys general and a coalition of nonprofits, the administration will now partially fund SNAP benefits for November. But the White House still refuses to fully fund critical food support for those most vulnerable — ignoring the judge's order to make those payments.
Like all Americans, Philadelphia health care workers are already facing a cost-of-living crisis. But as budget cuts lead to pay cuts for some of the workers Gary represents, not receiving SNAP benefits could push some to the brink.
“Despite being absolutely essential to Philadelphia’s health care infrastructure, many of these [health care] workers’ pay is so low that they have to rely on SNAP to get groceries. Now, because Congress is refusing to address the health care crisis they started, many (may) now lose their SNAP benefits due to the government shutdown. Haven’t our health care workers had enough?”
Gary is urging Congress to act now. End the shutdown, lower health care costs and fund public services.