Sept. 19 community event will highlight health care cuts that endanger 600+ hospitals nationwide

Registered nurses will hold a rally and community event on Saturday, Sept. 19 in Bangor, Maine to highlight the patient care impacts of federal health care cuts on Maine hospitals. The nurses are members of Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (MSNA/NNOC). NNOC is an affiliate of National Nurses United (NNU), the largest union of registered nurses in the nation. Nurses will also use the event to discuss their Vision for a Healthy Society, a set of broad political demands that require taking back health care, democracy, and society from billionaire and corporate control.

Financial analysis by NNU shows that the following hospitals in Maine are extremely vulnerable to service cuts, due to pending cuts imposed by H.R. 1 and their reliance on Medicare and Medicaid funding: (1) MaineHealth Mid Coast Hospital in Brunswick; (2) Northern Light AR Gould Hospital in Presque Isle; (3) St. Mary’s Health System in Lewiston; and (4) York Hospital in York.

In total, NNU expects that the total losses as a result of H.R. 1 across all four hospitals, which receive more than a million patient visits a year, will be between $18 and $26 million in a year.  More information on the impact of H.R. 1 on Maine hospitals and patient care is available here.

Who: Maine State Nurses Association / National Nurses United
What: ‘RED ALERT’ rally and community event
When: Sept. 19, 2026 | Free wellness checks beginning 11 a.m.; free food and live music beginning 11a.m..; program/rally begins at 12 p.m.
Where: Cascade Park, 600 State St., Bangor, Maine

Speakers and guests include:

• Cokie Giles, RN, California Nurses Association/NNOC President
• Jamie Brown, RN, NNU President
• Kelli Brennan, RN, Co-President Maine State Nurses Assn.
• Erin Oberson, RN,  Co-President Maine State Nurses Assn.
• Rev. Jarrett Kerbel, Saint John’s Episcopal Church
• Dr. Geoff Grattwick, Maine All Care
• Athena Bryce, NAACP Bangor, President
• Melissa “MIssy” Berky, Indivisible Bangor

“Nurses can’t accept the cutting of our patients’ health care in order to make billionaires richer and fund endless wars and violent immigration enforcement,” said Cokie Giles, RN and president of California Nurses Association/NNOC. “Mainers are facing hospital closures and service cuts because of federal budget cuts. However, nurses are equally concerned that the profit-minded corporations who run Maine hospitals will use the funding crisis to shortchange our patients. That’s why we need structural changes in our health care system, which right now consistently and shamefully puts profits over patients.”

The event will be near Eastern Maine Medical Center, a hospital of the Northern Light system, which has faced multimillion-dollar losses for the last five out of six years. The health system has a history of closing service lines in Maine: closing the same-day clinic in Waterville in Nov. 2025 following the closure of Inland Hospital; ending same-day services at its Bangor walk-in clinic in Sept. 2025; and shuttering acute rehabilitation at EMMC in Jan. 2023. At the same time, nearly two-thirds of EMMC’s inpatient discharges are on Medicaid and Medicare.

Across Maine, patients are expected to face increasing challenges to accessing care, especially with the expiration of ACA subsidies on top of the Medicaid and Medicare cuts. The state has estimated that 31,000 Mainers will lose Medicaid. Thousands more are facing rising rates on the individual market. They will undoubtedly be hit with a double punch as H.R. 1 is slated to cut SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) by $186 billion over the next ten years.

More information on the impact of H.R. 1 on Maine hospitals and patient care is available here.

‘RED ALERT’ tour offers the union nurses’ vision for how to make America healthy:

The Sept. 19 Bangor event is part of National Nurses United’s RED ALERT bus tour, which is travelling to communities facing a drastic reduction in the quantity and quality of health care services as a result of H.R. 1.

H.R. 1 is the 2025 budget bill, pushed through by Republicans and President Trump, that cut more than $1 trillion in Medicaid and Medicare funding to give billionaires tax breaks, militarize immigration enforcement, and fund endless wars abroad. Nurses have condemned these cuts to health care funding and denounced its funnelling into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), which have unleashed a deadly, illegal, and cruel terror campaign across the country. At least four people have been shot and killed by federal agents this year, including the July murders of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine.

Union nurses are taking their alternative Vision for a Healthy Society directly to the patients and working-class communities they serve. To date, RED ALERT has visited communities in Glendale, Oceanside, Alameda, and Oroville in California; Minneapolis, Minn.; Kalamazoo and Ironwood in Michigan; and Chicago. 

“The billionaire class and their Republican puppets are gutting public health protections to make themselves richer and militarize our neighborhoods, with zero regard for working people and families struggling to survive,” said NNU President Jamie Brown, RN. “Nurses refuse their deadly agenda. We’re taking the wheel and bringing our vision for a healthy society directly to patients and communities who will bear the brunt of Republican policies. We invite everyone who has felt abandoned by the political system to join us and build real working-class solidarity.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders has released comprehensive tax proposals to change the U.S. tax system and raise trillions in revenue, which NNU strongly endorses, to keep hospitals and health services accessible, eventually guarantee health care for all through Medicare for All, and build the pillars for a society that takes care of everyone’s needs, including affordable housing, education, and unionized living-wage jobs. He also recently introduced, alongside Rep. Ro Khanna (CA-17), the Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act, which would establish a 5 percent annual wealth tax on billionaires and invest the revenue in working families, including reversing the H.R. 1 Medicaid cuts and expanding Medicare to include vision, hearing, and dental.

Maine State Nurses Association is part of National Nurses Organizing Committee, representing 4,000 nurses and other caregivers from Portland to Fort Kent. NNOC is an affiliate of National Nurses United, the largest and fastest-growing labor union of registered nurses in the United States with nearly 225,000 members nationwide.