The NYC nurses strike reveals a fundamental flaw in US health care

More than 7,000 nurses in New York City are on strike after failing to agree on a new contract with the hospitals where they work, leading two hospital systems in the city to cancel elective surgeries, ask ambulances to divert patients to other hospitals, and bringing in traveling nurses to maintain operations.

The strike was very nearly a much bigger crisis: Nurses at eight other city hospitals reached a last-minute deal with their management. It is still perhaps the most high-profile example of the tension between hospital executives and their medical staff that has been magnified by the pandemic.

The past few years have made clear the degree to which American hospitals rely on nurses to handle a surge of patients in a public health crisis and the struggles of the same health system to appropriately value that nursing work. While the strike in NYC involves only four facilities, it’s a symptom of a structural failure in US health care: Hospitals do not have a strong financial incentive to invest in their nursing staffs.

Strikes by nurses and medical staff have occurred frequently in recent years. Eight of the 25 major work stoppages involving 1,000 workers or more that the US Labor Department tracked in 2022 were initiated by health care workers, the highest share of any single profession. There have been dozens of smaller walkouts by nurses in the past few years.