Healthcare is in a moment of crisis, with Affordable Care Act (ACA) premiums skyrocketing, employer-sponsored insurance costs climbing fast, and Medicaid facing deep, escalating cuts.
The GOP-led tax bill made healthcare cuts that will devastate working families, small businesses, and Americans of all ages. This tax package is their blueprint for the future: rising costs for families, less support for kids, and a middle class that gets left out in the cold, while billionaires and big corporations profit. These cuts are paired with billions in tax breaks for the wealthy.
The fall ACA fight made clear that Americans are deeply concerned about the rising cost of healthcare and its impact on affordability, the central organizing principle of our work in 2026. We’ll broaden the scope to tell the story of the $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid, which will escalate and be felt more as 7.5 million people lose their coverage by 2034.
Join the Week of Action
Notable events happening around the Week of Action include the start of Medicaid Work Requirements (May 1 in Nebraska), Congressional recess, the start of National Nurses Week and National Hospital Week (May 10-16), and the release of final ACA enrollment data. (By April 1, anyone who can’t afford to pay will be kicked off their ACA plan.) It will be a critical time to create a unified moment and continue to elevate personal stories and keep healthcare as a key issue. (Save the date for a July 30th Day of Action for the Medicare and Medicaid anniversaries!)
The primary strategy is to organize actions that generate earned media, online visibility, op-eds, etc, supplemented by secondary actions like social media campaigns or calls to members of Congress. We will have a Mobilize page soon. For more resources including talking points see here.
In our first week of action, together we moved a complex policy from the margins to the mainstream. Twenty-one members of the majority party across the House and Senate ultimately broke with party leadership because we made the first healthcare impact of H.R.1 impossible to ignore.
Ready to take action?
Contact Jen Kim [email protected] to co-sponsor or if you have questions.
This campaign is part of ESP’s broader Affordability Agenda—fighting for an economy where everyone can afford their basic needs, including healthcare. We’re building on the momentum from our tax fight to demand Congress put working families before billionaire tax cuts.