More than 400 nurses at Brooklyn Hospital Center have been without health insurance for six weeks, even as Governor Kathy Hochul quietly sent $15 million in emergency state aid to the financially struggling institution.
The nurses, represented by the New York State Nurses Association, are the only employees at the 181-year-old Fort Greene hospital who have lost coverage. Doctors, administrators, and other hospital workers remain fully insured. NYSNA officials say hospital administrators simply stopped paying into the nurses’ health care fund.
Rehana Lowtan, a nurse educator who has spent 20 years at the hospital, didn’t hold back. “You chose the nurses, the one group of people that actually show up — rain, sun, sleet, snow,” she said. “We have nurses here that have serious medical conditions. They have families that are on their plans that don’t have access to any kind of care right now.”
The hospital had requested $160 million from the state last fall. The $15 million Hochul provided falls far short of what administrators say they need to stabilize operations, let alone restore benefits. The facility has also received $74 million in state funding over the course of 2025. Despite that substantial support, leadership has signaled bankruptcy remains on the table. Hospital CEO Gary G. Terranoni said as much in a Spectrum News interview last November.
For nurses on the floor, the uncertainty is compounding the indignity. Yvette Byer-Henry, a certified nurse midwife with 25 years at Brooklyn Hospital, described a complete breakdown in communication from management. “There’s no communication,” she said. “It just reeks.”
Hospital spokesperson Zachary Fink said the facility is “working closely with NYSNA and the Hochul administration on a solution.” His statement acknowledged that “medical benefits are an essential part of supporting our colleagues and their families” and framed the core problem as securing sufficient funds to restore them.
That framing, however, hasn’t satisfied union officials or health policy observers watching this play out. Bill Hammond, a senior fellow for health policy at the Albany-based Empire Center, described the decision to cut off nurse benefits while leaving all other staff covered as “a move of desperation.” He suggested the move may be calculated. “That would communicate to the state we are in deep trouble, and it would turn the nurses into your allies for pushing the state for money,” Hammond said. “If that is their strategy that would be using them as a bargaining chip.”
Using nurses, who have continued to show up through every shift of this crisis, as pressure on the governor is a striking choice for a hospital that depends entirely on the trust and labor of those workers.
Brooklyn Hospital Center sits at the intersection of Fort Greene and Downtown Brooklyn, serving a community that relies heavily on Medicaid. That patient population is central to understanding why the hospital’s finances are so fragile. Medicaid reimbursement rates often fall below the actual cost of care, leaving safety net hospitals perpetually underfunded. Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest, a Brooklyn Democrat whose district includes the hospital, has pointed to this structural problem as the reason state aid is not charity but necessity.
Safety net hospitals across New York have struggled with this equation for years. Brooklyn Hospital’s situation is an extreme version of a familiar story, where institutions absorbing the highest share of uninsured and Medicaid patients get squeezed the hardest by inadequate reimbursement structures. The state has long known this. The question is whether $15 million, dispatched quietly, is a genuine effort to help or a way of appearing responsive without committing to a real fix.
For Lowtan, Byer-Henry, and their colleagues, the policy debate is abstract. The reality is six weeks without coverage, families unable to access care, and no clear timeline for resolution. These are nurses who stayed through the pandemic, who staff labor and delivery, emergency rooms, and intensive care units in one of Brooklyn’s most vital community hospitals.
They deserve a straight answer. So far, they haven’t gotten one.
