This week, union nurses and allies gathered in Washington, D.C. for a protest and rally to tell Congress: “Don’t let billionaires hog our health care!”

We came together in the streets to urge our elected officials to address our current health care crisis by:

1. Extending the Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies that are currently set to expire at the end of the year, to prevent marketplace premiums from skyrocketing for more than 20 million people in 2026.
   
   
2. Passing the Medicare for All Act to replace our broken, for-profit health care system with a single-payer health care system that would end health disparities, effectively control costs, and assure that everyone has equal ability to receive an excellent standard of care as a human right.

Nurses, labor organizers, and community members were joined by Medicare for All legislation authors Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, as well as cosponsor Rep. Ro Khanna, who spoke to the crowd about our ongoing fight to pass these short and long-term solutions.

Like Rep. Jayapal said, “The American people deserve a health care system that works for them, not just billionaires and big insurance CEOs.”

Now, we need to keep up the momentum and pressure the rest of Congress to act before it’s too late. As of today, there are only 12 days left in the legislative session, and House Democrats just introduced a discharge petition on the ACA subsidies. If a majority of members sign onto this, it will automatically trigger a yes-or-no vote on legislation to extend the ACA subsidies for three years.

We only need a handful of Republicans to join Democrats in supporting this, .

Call your Democratic member of Congress at (202) 224-3121, thank them for signing the discharge petition, and urge them to help get their Republican colleagues on board!

Let’s flood our representatives’ phone lines and demand they do what it takes to save the health care of tens of millions of people.

In solidarity,

National Nurses United