FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 14, 2025
FY Budget 2026: Council Chair Phil Mendelson Joins Committee on Health in Quietly Gutting DC’s Longest-Running Locally-Funded Healthcare Program
Approximately 25,000 Immigrant & Low-Income DC Adults Face Illness and Death — as “Cost-Effective Restructuring” Moves to a Vote TODAY!
WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Sunday afternoon, July 13, 2025, Council Chairman Phil Mendelson stood before a small group of journalists at the Wilson Building and confirmed what many advocates had feared: The budget proposal to dismantle DC’s locally funded Healthcare Alliance, which for decades has provided life-saving care to over 25,000 DC residents who are ineligible for federal programs like Medicaid and Medicare, will move to the Council as a whole for a Vote on Monday, July 14.
Mendelson called the decision a “restructuring,” suggesting the move will shift Alliance members into the DC Health Benefit Exchange — the local Affordable Care Act marketplace — in the name of “cost-effectiveness.”
“We hope [former Alliance members] will have similar benefits [in the healthcare marketplace], but be much more cost effective,” said Mendelson.
📺 Watch the presser (22:30 mark): tinyurl.com/mendo-july-13-media-briefing
But Mendelson's optimistic framing before DC's local media conceals devastating truths:
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Undocumented residents can’t legally access ACA or Medicaid, the very program Mendelson says folks from Alliance will be shifted into (with little planning or detail).
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The Council's potential vote to cut this long-running healthcare program aligns with Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which pressures states to eliminate local healthcare programs for immigrants.
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DC leadership is offering no alternatives — They’re cutting healthcare access for the District’s most vulnerable adults — quietly, cruelly, and without a legal fight or push back to the Trump anti-immigrant agenda.
- Some DC politicos, including Mendelson are simultaneously championing spending more than $1.3 Billion public dollars on luxury football stadium costs this same budget season.
“The so-called savings by ending this critical locally-funded healthcare program will result in the type of real catastrophic human cost that makes fascists like Trump smirk. As without access to basic preventative care, thousands of working-class DC residents — many of whom cook food, clean buildings, are on the construction sites, and care for elders — will face worsening illness, medical debt, and avoidable death,” said longtime DC resident and former ANC Commissioner, Chris Otten. “It’s not a restructuring — it represents an absolutely tragic eviction from care and DC's Blue MAGA politicians waging class-war against thousands of DC residents.”
Councilmember Christina Henderson, Chair of the Health Committee, has yet to offer ways to defend the adults on Alliance or offer a path forward that is clear for folks destined to be harmed by this surprise and “brutal” budget cut.
Mendelson's proposed changes to Mayor Bowser's FY 2026 Budget goes up for a discussion and first vote, today: https://lims.dccouncil.gov/Hearings/hearings/932
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