By Debru Carthan | Special to California Black Media Partners
As a frontline healthcare worker, I know what happens when hospitals are stretched too thin: people wait for hours in crowded emergency rooms, nurses try to care for too many patients at once, families delay treatment because they’re afraid of the bill. In many Black and working-class neighborhoods, this isn’t a temporary crisis, it’s a daily reality, and without intervention, it’s about to get much, much worse.
The federal budget enacted by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans cuts $100 billion from California healthcare to pay for enormous tax cuts for billionaires. Now, hospitals that already operate on razor-thin margins are being told to absorb devastating losses so that California’s richest 200 billionaires can continue to avoid paying their fair share. You
A recent analysis by Public Citizen identified 83 California hospitals at heightened risk of closure, layoffs, or service cuts because of the new federal funding cuts – the highest number of any state in the country. Many are urban safety-net hospitals that primarily serve Black, working-class patients in communities where people already struggle to access care.
Facilities like Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in South Los Angeles, East Los Angeles Doctors Hospital, Hollywood Presbyterian, and PIH Good Samaritan are lifelines for patients who rely on Medi-Cal, emergency rooms, trauma services, and public healthcare systems, and they’re all at-risk of closing because California’s billionaires pay much lower tax rates than working people pay out of every paycheck.
That’s why healthcare workers are supporting a modest, one-time tax on billionaires that will prevent hospital closures and ensure that the state’s billionaires finally pay their fair share.
Black Californians already face higher rates of hypertension, maternal mortality, asthma, stroke, and preventable emergency room visits. Structural inequality has created enormous gaps in health outcomes, and cutting healthcare funding will only widen them. According to the Public Citizen analysis, hospitals at greatest risk from federal healthcare cuts disproportionately serve Black and Latino communities and higher-poverty areas.
Healthcare workers understand what happens when hospitals disappear. Ambulances travel farther. ER wait times explode. Patients delay care until small problems become life-threatening emergencies. Overcrowding increases burnout for nurses, technicians, respiratory therapists, and doctors who are already exhausted from years of understaffing.
And when city hospitals close, the damage spreads quickly. Community clinics lose referral partners. Trauma centers absorb impossible patient loads. Families without reliable transportation suddenly have to travel across counties for life-saving care, when every second matters. When these things happen, patients die unnecessarily. Families lose loved ones, and healthcare workers feel helpless.
Meanwhile, billionaires are doing fine. They continue benefiting from a tax system that allows their immense fortunes to grow largely untouched, which is why California’s billionaire tax proposal isn’t just necessary, it’s long overdue.
The idea is simple: if billionaires have accumulated extraordinary wealth while public systems collapse around us, they should contribute more to sustaining the society that made that wealth possible. A modest tax on extreme wealth could help stabilize hospitals, protect emergency services, preserve healthcare jobs, and keep care accessible for millions of Californians.
As healthcare workers, we’re trained to recognize emergencies before they become catastrophes. California’s hospital system is approaching that point right now. We can either act to protect the hospitals our communities depend on, or we can continue rewarding concentrated wealth while the hospitals and ERs we rely on close their doors forever.
This debate is ultimately about values. Do we believe billionaires deserve another tax break more than a child deserves an emergency room nearby? More than a mother deserves regular prenatal care and a maternity ward she can get to when she’s in labor? Do we believe Wall Street portfolios matter more than if a grandmother can receive cancer treatment close to home?
Healthcare workers already know our answer. And this November, we hope you’ll join us in voting our values by insisting billionaires finally pay their fair share.
About the Author
Debru Carthan is a Radiologic Technologist at Kaiser in California.