The city’s Public Advocate had a 2:00 PM slot at New York City Hall on June 5, 2026, to speak at the City Council Committee on Hospitals hearing on the Fiscal Year 2027 executive budget. A public schedule from the Office of the Public Advocate listed the appearance. The schedule did not list one word of what Jumaane Williams actually said, and his office has not posted the testimony. The hearing was about the city’s public hospital system and the federal money it stands to lose. What he told them is not on the record.

NYC Health + Hospitals is the largest municipal health system in the United States. Per its public record, it runs 11 hospitals, five long-term care centers and roughly 30 community clinics, employs about 45,000 people, and treats more than one million patients a year, including more than 475,000 uninsured New Yorkers it cannot bill and will not turn away. This is the place you end up when you have nowhere else to go. As of mid-2026, it is doing its budget math with a federal cut bearing down on it.

In December 2025, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli put out an assessment of the system’s fiscal outlook. According to the Comptroller’s office, H+H has already baked federal Disproportionate Share Hospital cuts of up to $622 million into its financial plans. The city’s Department of Social Services estimated that roughly 950,000 city residents stand to lose health coverage, about 800,000 from Medicaid and 150,000 from the Essential Plan. That matters to H+H specifically because, per the same report, Medicare and Medicaid patients made up 84 percent of its hospital discharges in fiscal 2025. When those patients lose their insurance, they do not stop getting sick. They just stop being billable, and they show up at the safety-net hospital anyway.