7th Day of New York Nurses’ Strike Highlights Continuing Health Care Problems

The longest nurses’ strike in New York City history entered its seventh day Sunday with no clear end in sight. And even if this strike is ever resolved, it should be yet another stark reminder that the US health care system is like the title of this 2018 song by lovelytheband: “Broken.” A broken health care system, in turn, is the opposite of a wonderful thing for patients and the rest of society.

The New York nurses’ strike began on Monday

The New York nurses’ strike hit on Jan. 12, when about 15,000 nurses essentially said “I can’t go for it (can’t do)” over their current pay and working conditions and walked off the job at hospitals in the Mount Sinai, Montefiore and NewYork-Presbyterian systems. Since then, the New York State Nurses Association — the union that represents nurses — has been involved in negotiations with hospital management. The union is arguing for wage increases and increased measures to protect the safety of nurses. After talks early last week stalled like a car made of sausage, a federal mediator has joined the mix.

But so far, there are no signs that they are close to any deal. In a statement, Angela Karafazli, a spokeswoman for New York Presbyterians, called the association’s proposals “absurd.” Meanwhile, the New York State Nurses Association called progress “very little” and said it “submitted a revised set of proposals that hospital officials rejected without offering a counterproposal.”

Kaiser Permanente nurses strike planned

This is not the only impressive news in the US. The California Nurses/Healthcare Professionals Association has already served a 10-day notice that more than 31,000 nurses and other healthcare professionals at Kaiser Permanente plan to strike on Monday, January 26. and more than 200 clinics in the Kaiser system across California and Hawaii to go out of business. The union argues that Kaiser has billions of dollars in financial reserves and investments in Kaiser, yet continues to underperform health care facilities and pile increasing workloads on health care professionals while failing to provide wages that keep pace with rising housing, food and health care costs.

The nurses’ strike is not surprising given the ongoing problem of burnout among all health professionals

All of this should be as shocking as people arguing over social media. A report issued by the US Surgeon General in 2022 titled “Addressing Health Worker Burnout: The US Surgeon General’s Advice for Building a Thriving Health Workforce” deemed the US health care system as “A system already at breaking point.” The report served as a call to address the long-standing growing problem of health worker burnout. The report stated that “Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Academy of Medicine found that burnout had reached ‘crisis levels.’ among the US healthcare workforce, with 35-54% of nurses and physicians and 45-60% of medical students and residents reporting symptoms of burnout.”

Yes, if there was a festival specifically about the US health care system, the airing of grievances could go on and on with Frank Costanzas between health professionals and patients saying “I have a lot of problems with your people”, meaning the people who run the system. The Surgeon General’s report cited challenges and demands facing health care workers even before the COVID-19 pandemic. These included a rapidly changing healthcare environment, complex arrays of information to synthesize, increasingly burdensome administrative tasks, loss of autonomy, flexibility and voice, spread of misinformation and disinformation, lack of leadership, unrealistic expectations, poor care coordination, harassment and discrimination, and excessive hours and workload.

Nurses’ strike highlights growing pay gap between health executives and health professionals

And here’s something to watch out for in the health care system: where the fees go. Striking New York nurses said pay for health care executives at the Mount Sinai, Montefiore and NewYork-Presbyterian systems suggests more resources are available to pay nurses and other health professionals more. For example, the reported salary of Steven J. Corwin, the outgoing CEO and President of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, in 2024 was over $26 million, which would be 161 times greater than the median salary of $163,000 for a nurse. according to what Somaiyah Hafeez wrote The Mirror.

This pay gap between executives and health care professionals—you know, the people who actually do the direct patient care work—isn’t unique to these health care systems in New York. A study published in the journal Health matters in August 2025 found that average executive pay rose 27.5% from 2009 to 2023 compared to only a 9.8% increase in average pay for all hospital employees over the same time period. This kind of reflects what is happening in the corporate world in general in the US

The past three decades have seen an increase in corporate healthcare in the US. That includes ever-larger chunks of health care dollars going not only to executives but also to things like luxury offices and advertising. There have also been extensive mergers and acquisitions, moving healthcare organizations from smaller to increasingly massive.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted existing problems with the healthcare system

The COVID-19 pandemic has in many ways been like a giant vacuum cleaner. Not only was it messy, the pandemic also revealed many of the existing problems in society. One of those big problems was the US health care system. Remember that in 2020 the US healthcare system struggled to keep up with the influx of patients. Many clinics and hospitals lacked the staffing and redundancy to cope with increases in demand. Heck, clinics and hospitals didn’t even have enough N95 face masks to go around. Many healthcare professionals, including doctors and nurses, volunteered their time working long hours without compensation to care for patients. Were they later rewarded for going above and beyond? Not exactly.

In fact, the opposite happened. Health misinformation and misinformation ran rampant, with humans and bots making claims that encouraged mistrust of health professionals. All this has not created the best working conditions and environments for health professionals.

However, instead of solving all the aforementioned problems, political and business leaders seem to have largely ignored them. And this will continue to be a detriment to society. Healthcare professionals, such as nurses who directly care for patients, are central to healthcare. If they are not happy or present, patient care will undoubtedly suffer. This, in turn, can lead to preventable suffering and death, as well as lost productivity for businesses and other organizations across the country.

Also, don’t underestimate the ripple effects a nurses’ strike can have. Existing work must be transferred to other already overstretched healthcare professionals such as doctors, physiotherapists and technicians. This, in turn, may exacerbate their frustration and burnout, which will further erode a US health care system seemingly held together by Band Aids. Many people don’t realize how broken the system is until they get sick and need it. It’s amazing how often people wait until disasters happen before they realize that something urgently needs to be fixed.