To the Editor:

As nurses we are writing this opinion in our role as patient advocates. Previous letters have been dedicated to informing you of the dangers of the planned Project 2025, the playbook for the next conservative administration. Project 2025 threatens the health, safety, and well-being of you, your loved ones, and our country. These policies will touch and seek to restructure nearly every aspect of American life, as seen in the following implications for our health and healthcare.

Project 2025 calls for eliminating the Medicare drug negotiation program that has finally reined in price gouging by big pharma of insulin and soon-to-be other life-saving drugs that make these drugs accessible to all whose lives depend on them. More than 45 million Americans are currently enrolled in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace. Project 2025 seeks to appeal and/or gut the ACA and all the protections it provides.

Preexisting conditions will again be used to deny health insurance, contraception will be restricted and prescription drug prices will increase. Medicare and Medicaid will be privatized and defunded. Medicare Advantage plans will become the default Medicare enrollment option and will no longer be required to provide the basic Medicare requirements. This will take us back to pre-ACA, ie,  millions of uninsured or underinsured Americans, and the denial of quality healthcare to those who need it the most.

Recent research indicates that vaccination recommendations by the ACIP and CDC, have been credited to preventing millions of illnesses and deaths from 1994-2023. This has made us a healthier nation. The goal of Project 2025 is to reduce or eliminate the impact of these and all government agencies and the expertise they provide. According to Project 2025 we don’t need experts. Why would we if we have Google?

A woman’s right to make reproductive healthcare decisions  will no longer be respected with her bodily autonomy rights dismissed.  Masquerading as morality, Project 2025 seeks to put a national end to reproductive rights including all medically necessary and elective abortions. Some of the strategies to achieve these goals include prohibiting abortion travel funding, excluding abortion providers from Medicaid participation, withdrawing federal medicare participation for states that include abortion coverage in private insurance plans, limiting other contraceptive measures, and eliminating access to approved safe early abortion medications.

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Project 2025 also seeks to utilize the Department of HHS as a monitoring and reporting agency for pregnancy and reproductive health surveillance. In vitro fertilization will be denied to single and same-sex couples. The nuclear family is Project’s 2025 valued family. All others are judged inferior and not worthy of support or protection.

Project 2025 specifically threatens the health and rights of LGBGTQ+ citizens and their healthcare providers by scaling back anti-discrimination laws based on gender, banning care related to gender identity, and prioritizing religion-based objections to treating gender minority patients.

From increasing natural disaster severity to threats of emerging and changing infectious diseases, the link between the health of our planet and our health is direct and undeniable  as seen by the recent Hurricane Helene. Project 2025 seeks to weaken climate change policies and institutions impairing the national and global response to climate change hence threatening our health.

Project 2025 is a clear and present danger to our health. As nurses and health advocates, we recommend that we take heed of this threat directly attached to another Trump administration and neutralize it at the ballot box on November 5 with our votes.

Amy Strum, RN

Maureen Harpell, RN, MSN, FNP

Bridgton

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