$12.4 billion in federal health care cuts will hurt 'the most vulnerable,' say Long Island advocates, nonprofits

Some programs that help Long Islanders struggling with addiction and mental illness have been eliminated, and the future of other local health care services remains uncertain as the effects of $12.4 billion in federal cuts announced this week ripple through the Island’s communities, leaders of nonprofits say.

"The most vulnerable people in the community are the ones being hurt," said Jeffrey Friedman, CEO of Hicksville-based CN Guidance & Counseling Services, which lost $4 million in funding.

The Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement that the money being trimmed mostly is COVID-19-related, including vaccination and testing.

"The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago," the agency said.

Yet although Congress originally allocated the money to fight COVID-19, much of the money later was shifted toward other health needs.

Statewide, more than $300 million was cut, Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement Wednesday.

"These cuts aren’t just numbers on a page — they’re going to hurt real people in every corner of New York," said Hochul, who vowed to "fight them tooth and nail."

CN Guidance, which serves 31,000 Nassau and Suffolk residents annually, lost an early intervention program for people with mental illness, Friedman said. Studies show that if people are treated early in their diagnosis, they’re less likely to have a severe long-term condition and more likely to stay in treatment and recover, he said.

"It’s a wonderful program and very successful," he said.

Another eliminated program is street outreach to people with addiction, Friedman said.

The federal government also pulled money that was to help CN Guidance open a center to provide emergency care for people experiencing a mental health or substance use crisis, he said.

Friedman said the organization is still tallying the number of clients affected by the cuts, but it is "dozens and dozens."

The federal government abruptly cut off the money, rather than giving the group time to wind the programs down, Friedman said. CN Guidance is scrambling to make sure clients continue to receive help, either from the group or from another organization, he said.

"We have an ethical and moral responsibility not just to say, ‘OK, there are no more services today. It's finished,’" he said.

CN Guidance is trying to avoid layoffs, but it's unclear if there will be enough money to keep staff levels the same, he said. The cuts represent 6% of the organization’s budget, Friedman said.

Leaders of other organizations, and New York State and Nassau and Suffolk counties, said in interviews and statements they are unclear whether or how the cuts will directly affect them. Federal funding is sometimes difficult to track because it often is funneled through state and local governments.

Jeffrey Reynolds, president and CEO of the Garden City-based Family & Children’s Association, said it appears that money to fund a Roosevelt program to prevent addiction was cut. But he’s not sure.

"All of us are calling New York State saying, ‘Is this our money? Are these our programs?’" he said. "Everyone’s a bit panicked."

Federal money for the Roosevelt program passes through the state Office of Addiction Services and Supports. But the state isn't yet sure which programs are affected. "We are reviewing these funding cuts for potential impacts," an agency statement said.

In addition, he’s concerned that the extent of the cuts will reverse progress on Long Island in reducing opioid overdoses.

"We've started to turn the corner on opioid fatalities, specifically fentanyl," he said. "We're finally beginning to see a glimmer of hope. We're finally going to fewer funerals, and lo and behold, precisely at a time when we seem to have gained some ground, I worry that we're going to give those gains back through wholesale cuts that are anything but strategic and anything but surgical, but incredibly dangerous."

Although HHS’ statement focused on COVID-19, the money also was to head off a future, unknown pandemic and to control diseases like measles and bird flu, said Martine Hackett, chair of population health at Hofstra University.

"When you're preventing disease or a death, your success is sort of invisible," she said. "By not investing these funds now, we will start to see the effects one year, five years, 10 years later."

HHS and the White House did not respond to questions as to how much of the $12.4 billion was earmarked for COVID-19 and how much for other health programs. The cuts include $11.4 billion from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and $1 billion from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

And COVID-19 remains deadly, with epidemiologists unsure whether a more dangerous variant could make it more lethal. COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations have fallen sharply since the pandemic’s 2021 nationwide peak, but more than 31,000 people died of COVID-19 in the United States in 2024, including nearly 350 on Long Island, according to provisional CDC data.

The cuts are part of a massive contraction of HHS. The Trump administration announced Thursday it was laying off 10,000 agency employees, added to 10,000 others who voluntarily are leaving the department.

Nonprofit leaders are worried what will come next. The Republican-controlled House last month told the committee that oversees Medicaid, Medicare and child-health funding to find $880 billion in cuts to those programs over 10 years.

"The kind of cuts they’re talking about would devastate us," Friedman said.

By David Olson

david.olson@newsday.com@DavidOlson11

David Olson covers health care. He has worked at Newsday since 2015 and previously covered immigration, multicultural issues and religion at The Press-Enterprise in Southern California.