This post is part of a three-part series of arguments surrounding the Healthcare For All resolution: one from the authors of the original resolution, and one from the authors of each of the two proposed amendments.

  1. Healthcare For All Resolution Response to Amendments (this post)
  2. Rationale Behind the Amendment: Building Organizing Power to Win Universal Healthcare
  3. Rationale Behind the Amendment: For a Fighting & Organization Building Campaign (To Be Posted on Thursday, October 29)

We are also interested in posting blog pieces by any interested DSA member on how they are orienting around the resolution and amendments: what they agree and disagree with, and what they are supporting. We are looking to post more opinions on this topic up until the convention on November 14th. Please reach out to the Working Group if you'd like to contribute.

The authors of the “Healthcare for All (HCFA) Priority Campaign Proposal” and Resolution offer the following comments in opposition to the dissident amendments presented by Joe L et al. entitled “Building Organizing Power to Win Universal Healthcare,” and by Adam IAD et al. entitled “For a Fighting & Organization Building Campaign.”

Introduction

We appreciate the engagement of our comrades on these large-scale healthcare issues. The healthcare industry is formidable, but we believe that together we have generations of lived experience, skills, and power to overcome it. We are encouraged to see that some of the suggestions made in the amendments are consistent with our own vision to pass the New York Health Act (NYHA). Some of the suggestions already are named in the original unamended HCFA proposal or are currently in progress.

However, some of the assumptions of these amendments are incorrect and defeatist in nature, and the goals and approaches proposed in both of these amendments fundamentally conflict with the core goals and methods laid out in our original resolution and proposal. They contrast so greatly in vision that we are mystified why these authors did not propose their own independent resolutions. The proposed amendments even substitute entirely different titles for the resolution’s original title, and the Joe L. et al amendment almost entirely supplants the original proposal with its own.

These significant differences lead us to vigorously oppose both dissident measures.

Points of disagreement

First, there is a fundamental difference in our theories of change. We believe that, as socialists, we must respond to the current material healthcare needs of millions of people who will be losing Medicaid and facing skyrocketing health insurance premiums and debt with a clear, bold vision of systemic change, NYHA, that is easy and compelling to talk to neighbors, co-workers, and union siblings about. In the words of Mayor Mamdani, “Being a leftist means taking big shots.”

  • Our HCFA resolution proposes leading with NYHA organizing in 2027 as a response to the current healthcare crisis. We acknowledge in our proposal that organizing for NYHA may be a multi-year campaign with potential positive implications in the 2028 presidential and 2030 gubernatorial races. Our intention and demand is to pass NYHA in 2027, but if it does not, we know that organizing for it now, not later, will build the kind of movement we want and need to ultimately win. NYHA organizing is noticeably absent from the Joe L et al. amendment’s 2027 milestones, failing to even mention NYHA until 2029, and NYHA organizing is significantly delayed in the Adam IAD et al. amendment’s 2027 timeline.
  • We stated both short-term and long-term goals in our timeline because both NYC DSA and longtime members of the Healthcare Working Group (HCWG) advised writing short term specific and concrete goals for a priority campaign proposal. The amendments’ insistence on long term timelines fall outside NYC DSA’s recommendations for writing a priority campaign proposal.
  • NYC DSA must play a significant role in the statewide movement for NYHA because NYC is the largest city in NY and the center of the healthcare industry and global capital. This is a reason for us to enthusiastically join the fight for NYHA, not a reason to shy away from it.
  • NYHA’s position outside of the state budget process is an asset, not a deficiency. It allows for the bill to be passed on principle before economics come into play. It enables organizing beyond the short competitive budget season, and it can be leveraged to amplify the need for interim budget bills like Tax the Rich that will not achieve the structural change needed in the healthcare economy.
  • Both Joe L’s and Adam IAD’s implied theory of change emphasizes that incremental measures will result in the election of a more enlightened governor in 2030 who is friendly to the NYHA. Their amendments propose multi-year timelines with no mention of NYHA in the first year (2027). Confusingly, Adam IAD et al.’s amendment also proposes simultaneously organizing for socialized medicine, like the UK’s NHS, which NYHA is not. This introduces an entirely new goal that was never debated within the HCWG and does not reflect its consensus.
  • Incrementalism has not and will not yield the systemic change we need. In fact, lessons from history and contemporary movements and campaigns instruct us that incremental progress is often the result of compromises to bigger, bolder demands. The NYC DSA 2026 Tax the Rich Priority Campaign, for example, did not win all of its goals, but it did achieve a significant change by creating the pied-a-terre tax.
  • Recent HCWG history is instructive. A citywide priority campaign resolution very similar to Joe L’s amendment was proposed and passed in 2021. In the subsequent 5 years, that proposal and its incrementalist agenda have not brought us appreciably closer to passing NYHA, nor have those incremental initiatives been leveraged by NYC DSA to advocate for NYHA. Meanwhile, despite the COVID-19 pandemic revealing the horrific failures of the capitalist healthcare system and Trump administration attacks on healthcare, the NYC DSA HCWG diminished in membership and activity, stalled deciding which incremental measures to work on, and failed to inspire and draw DSA members and the broader public.
  • Since the current HCWG Organizing Committee started its term in early 2026, the overwhelming interest expressed by members has been in prioritizing NYHA instead of any alternative, with 85% of the HCWG voting in favor of a resolution prioritizing NYHA in 2027.

Second, our HCFA proposal and recent NYHA organizing clearly centers organizing workers, contrary to the amendments’ assertions that our resolution proposes only “tired lobbying and press tactics.” See WHEREAS clause #9 and further details in the linked proposal related to organizing workers, patients, and affected communities. Drawing on successes with neighborhood-based canvassing (by DSA), healthcare worker-led hospital canvassing (by Health Justice for NY), and intra-union organizing (e.g. in DC 37), our recent work and proposal clearly centers organizing in workplaces, unions, neighborhoods, and communities targeted by federal cuts. Lobby days and media engagement are complementary tactics as in any sustained, multi-prong campaign. Our resolution takes inspiration from the campaign of Mayor Mamdani to engage with large swaths of the population.

  • As stated in the original resolution, we intend to continue building on and supporting rank and file worker organizing for NYHA, e.g. the work of the HCWG Labor Coordination Subcommittee and the Rank+File4NYHA group. Our specific detailed labor strategy will be developed by the campaign OC–including supporting rank and file workers for NYHA inside key public sector unions– once the HCFA campaign is set in motion. DC37 locals 3005 and 1113 have set examples of how internal union organizing can exert pressure on union leadership and potentially change union culture, and we foster more opportunities for such organizing.
  • The unamended HCFA proposal explicitly calls for NYHA to be incorporated into the Tax the Rich campaign’s affordability agenda. Both amendments, in contrast, merely call for collaboration with or imitation of the TTR campaign, with no indication for how NYHA will be prioritized or incorporated. The amendments choose instead to prioritize other bills or tactics.

Third, socialists must respond meaningfully with a hopeful positive vision to the current and upcoming political moment–when millions lose access to healthcare, and the healthcare economy has the rug pulled out from under it. The proposed amendments fail to grasp this and risk making DSA irrelevant. Instead of channelling the wave of revulsion and despair created by Trump’s attack on healthcare to demand radical change, the amendment authors assume defeat and suggest that the “pragmatic” position is to retreat from offering a clear solution in favor of modest, incremental tweaks to the present and unworkable system.

  • We promote a positive vision for large-scale change, which can be revitalizing, energizing, and therapeutic to a population that has been harmed on as large and deep a scale as patients in the US health system. The amendment authors state concerns about organizers’ burnout, pointing to disengagement in past years. They do not acknowledge the positive experience of participating in a mass movement, nor the groundswell of support for universal healthcare evidenced in recent polling, nor the significant shift in the cultural, political, and organizing landscape in the last several years. They also disregard and diminish the substantial organizing and enthusiasm for NYHA that exists and is growing statewide.
  • Building a positive mass movement of people is necessary to hold large institutions accountable. As the amendment authors point out, there are several electeds and organizations who claim to support NYHA but don’t meaningfully prioritize it. Public pressure has the power to change the priorities of some, overcome institutional opposition, and create the pain points needed for alternative candidates to arise.

Lastly, running a large-scale HCFA priority campaign will be a formidable task, which deserves its own dedicated space, funding, and leadership. Our resolution therefore proposes a budget in line with other priority campaigns, and proposes an Organizing Committee (OC) for the HCFA campaign that is independent from that of the HCWG OC while also being housed within the HCWG.

  • The HCFA Campaign OC will initially be filled by the authors of the HCFA resolution until ultimately filled by winners of an election–a process and structure that is modeled after other successful priority campaigns, such as Tax the Rich.
  • This structure allows for the HCFA campaign to attract experienced leads and be guided by an OC that is fully invested in it. We do not want to force HCWG OC members to work on a campaign they are not enthusiastic about, nor would that be fair to the HCFA campaign.
  • This structure also allows space for the HCWG to continue working on other healthcare issues, e.g., providing solidarity to healthcare workers on strike or get ICE out of hospitals.
  • Existing HCWG OC members may run for a role on the HCFA OC.

Points of agreement

We agree with the authors of both amendments that it is important to build leadership capacity, strengthen grassroots labor support for NYHA, promote NYHA within the NYC Health & Hospitals system, work with SIOs, and take advantage of the presence of a socialist mayor. We love the idea of hearings/tribunals and have already begun proposing related hearings to SIOs. This and other tactics will be included in a detailed organizing plan once the HCFA priority campaign is set in motion. We also see the value of some of the projects proposed by Joe L et al; they can run concurrently to a HCFA campaign within the HCWG or elsewhere.

We also agree with several of the suggestions made by Adam IAD et al., and they are already being enacted by the HCWG, e.g. starting local NYC DSA branch-based organizing. We agree that the powerful hospital industry is a serious opponent to NYHA, which is why we named them among our targets. We agree and have stated that organizing for NYHA supports the goal of Medicare for All. Finally, we agree that contributions from the healthcare industry to elected officials should be interrogated; this is why the HCWG recently started a donations tracker and is promoting the National Nurses’ United “Patients Over Profits” Pledge.

In summary, we insist that the original unamended proposal is the appropriate consensus vehicle for organizing to bring universal healthcare to all New Yorkers. We believe its passage enacts the will of the majority of the Healthcare Working Group, which overwhelmingly voted in favor of making NYHA an immediate citywide priority campaign in 2027. HCFA is the only proposal on the table that offers the vision required to both inspire and meet the needs of New Yorkers.

We call upon the Convention delegates to reject both dissident amendments. We remain open to improving on the HCFA Priority Campaign vision with input from all interested parties and to engaging in open and transparent debate on all its components.