‘No shortage of wealth’: Mamdani, other Democrats chide NYC hospital executives over nurses’ strike

POLITICO – Tuesday, January 13, 2026
By Maya Kaufman

Politicians are piling on criticism of New York City hospitals as executives scramble to weather a historic nurses strike.

Nearly 15,000 nurses walked out Monday at some of the city’s largest private hospitals — including Montefiore Medical Center and multiple New York-Presbyterian and Mount Sinai Health System locations — after months of stalled negotiations over pay raises, health insurance coverage and understaffing penalties.

The New York State Nurses Association and a host of influential political allies, including Mayor Zohran Mamdani, are laying the blame at hospital executives’ feet.

As the nurses lambast some of the city’s most well-off hospitals for crying poverty, the strike is quickly becoming a proxy war for broader discontent over the U.S. health care system. Mamdani, who catapulted into City Hall on a platform of making New York City more affordable, said the strike raises fundamental questions about who benefits from the country’s complicated, costly and porous health care system.

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