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Port Washington-Manhasset

US CONCURRENCE PRIVATIZATION UPDATE

The LWV of Port Washington-Manhasset (LWV PWM, NY), along with the New York State and Vermont State Leagues, asks other state and local Leagues to support consideration of a Concurrence at the National Convention 2026 that would update the current LWV National position on Privatization (2012).  

Quick links to content below:

A. Summary Information

    1. Background
      • Historical
      • Today
    2. Rationale for using Concurrence Process
    3. Highlights
    4. Pro/Con on this Update concurrence
    5. League Studies of Privatization supporting this Update 
    6. Leagues supporting this Update

B. Concurrence Statement (text to be adopted) & Current positions

    1. Text of the Proposed Concurrence: PWM Privatization Update
    2. LWV of Vermont position
    3. LWV of US position
    4. Sample example of integrating the Update into the US Position (only a sample; this will be under the control of the US if the concurrence passes)

C. How your League can support this Update initiative 

D. Learn More — read, watch, listen

Email the Update Team: LWV.Update4Convention@gmail.com

A. Summary

Materials Required by LWVUS Bylaws for Concurrence

1. Background

HISTORY - Read More

Following the pandemic, the LWVNY Healthcare Committee began analyzing newly introduced health-reform bills focused on privatization. For example, research shows for-profit hospices and nursing homes deliver dramatically worse health outcomes than their nonprofit counterparts, but could League members advocate in favor of such bills? Similarly, there were bills that would remove for-profit Medicaid middlemen from managed long-term care (in patient homes and nursing homes) — potentially saving NYS billions per year, while reducing hurdles to care for NYS patients, and potentially reducing provider shortages — all benefits Connecticut enjoyed (still enjoys) when it deprivatized Medicaid Managed Care in 2012.  

Then NY learned that LWV Vermont, concerned about privatization in Vermont, was studying privatization of healthcare and other common goods (basic human needs, as defined in the US Privatization position) to create a position to allow advocacy on Vermont bills, which it began doing  within weeks of adopting its position in 2023.  At the urging of League healthcare advocates from across the county, Vermont brought its position to LWV Convention 2024.  Although healthcare advocates were enthusiastic about this new position, it allows advocacy for more issues than healthcare alone.  Over 85 local and state Leagues supported concurring with the Vermont Update at Convention 2026.

The 2024 Convention sparked needed discussion and education about privatization, but the position was not adopted. 

Read More

LWV PWM shortened and resequenced language of the Vermont Update to focus on four critical issues identified during Convention 2024 post-mortem discussions. In particular, discussion focused on areas of confusion which NYS delegates heard LWVUS staff describe as already supported by the current national position; fortuitously, these also seemed the most useful for advocacy within NYS.

LWVPWM held member education and consensus sessions in 2024 before adopting this Privatization Update position. New York delegates overwhelmingly voted to adopt this (new) Privatization Update at the LWVNY Convention 2025.

TODAY

The LWV of Port Washington-Manhasset (LWVPWM of NY), along with the New York and Vermont State Leagues, asks other state and local Leagues to support consideration of a Concurrence at LWV Convention 2026 that would update the current LWV National position on Privatization (2012).  

The PWM Privatization Update is a shortened version of the Vermont Privatization position (2023); it uses language from the Vermont text to clarify four elements of the national position (see 3. Highlights below) so state and local Leagues can advocate more effectively, confident that they are aligned with national League  policy in addressing an accelerating trend: i.e.,

the siphoning of public funding (taxes) into corporate profits and away from critical services aimed “to preserve the common good, to protect national or local security or to meet the needs of the most vulnerable members of society.” (from US Privatization position)

Note:  League advocacy that public funding should serve the public — particularly at local and state levels — has never been more critical,  even as it remains central the League mission and “Making Democracy Work.”

    •  

2. Rationale: Why This Concurrence Is Appropriate and Timely

It is appropriate to amend the LWVUS Privatization position (2012) by concurring with the  LWVPWM Privatization Update (2024) to clarify language or logic in four currently confusing areas. Utilizing the concurrence process will benefit state and local Leagues without requiring additional resources from them or the national League. Vermont, which undertook the most recent study (there have been four in the past 2 decades— see “Read More” below), has used its updated position in three legislative sessions. New York will have used its shortened updated position in one legislative session.  

Notably, the Leagues of both states did the work of adopting new positions due to confusion over what the current national position supports. That confusion made using it for advocacy on state legislation problematic. Perhaps related, of the forty-plus national positions, the privatization position is one of only three without a history (and one of those was adopted in 2024).

By adopting (passing) this concurrence, convention delegates will update our national position to make it possible for Leagues to speak to current concerns — from health inequities that have grown more severe to the harms of monopolistically-priced private capture of public goods — without having to conduct their own studies, create their own study materials, and go through their own consensus meetings.  

Note: the League position on Privatization is not about free markets or capitalism in general nor about allowing the private sector to earn profits — instead it provides guidance to local and state Leagues on legislation and regulation of services that the League considers essential “to preserve the common good, to protect national or local security or to meet the needs of the most vulnerable members of society” — and only those services. By adding the “fiduciary duty” standard, the Update will allow Leagues to advocate for legislation or regulation of both for-profit and non-profit entities that meet or fail that standard.

Read More

Over the past dozen years since the US position was adopted, the phrase “privatizing profits and socializing losses” has become a ubiquitous, if not clamorous, critique. Increasing numbers of voices — including public policy analysts, economists, journalists, and those who serve the most vulnerable among us — have expressed growing concern about the transfer of public services and assets away from public control. This has been accompanied by reduced access, degraded quality, and increased prices for those common goods, along with the transfer of public tax dollars to investors and shareholders.

The accelerating privatization of healthcare, for example, has increasingly siphoned tens of billions of dollars away from actual healthcare services into investors’ wallets; Americans have become increasingly frustrated by rising costs, premiums, and cost-sharing accompanied by increasing denials, delays, and degrading of healthcare — trends harmful in their own right but trends that are also fueling increased income inequality and inequalities around quality of life and early, preventable deaths.

But healthcare is not the only common good affected by privatization. 

Public-private partnerships have privatized water, roads, prisons, the military, among other services, leading to torrents of headlined scandals at the local, state, and national levels.  The “efficiency” promised by these deals has, as with healthcare, increased prices, decreased access, degraded quality and safety —  and led to tragic DEI disparities. There have been four League studies of privatization in the last two decades:

    1. Vermont in 2023
    2. US in 2010
    3. Seattle Kings in 2009
    4. Monterey Peninsula in 2007

 

Adopting this PWM Update will allow advocacy for local and state bills (and regulation) to ensure affordable access to needed services that benefit everyone, particularly poor, rural, and other socially and economically marginalized communities.

3. Highlights: What This Update Adds

As Leagues seek to advocate for local and state legislation to appropriately address the harms of increasing privatization of the economic domains defined in the LWVUS Privatization position, confusions have arisen about what advocacy the national position allows.  The Update makes explicit two areas supported elsewhere in Impact on Issues and clarifies two areas where LWVUS advocacy indicates support for those interpretations.

The Update explicitly 

      • Adds “healthcare” into the position’s list of “services fundamental to the governance of a democratic society” 
      • Gives teeth to the position by noting that private entities that provide services in the listed “common good” areas — that fail to serve any or all the public (including the marginalized and vulnerable) — in the way the position requires, can be held accountable up to and including de-privatizing them.  Neither the position nor the Update requires a League to take such action. Instead, it allows League advocacy where a state or local League chooses to advocate for a specific bill or regulation.

The Update also clarifies two areas where recent LWVUS advocacy suggests two additional “best practices” 

      • Prioritizing fiduciary responsibility to the public (rather than prioritizing returns/all profits to investors) — regarding “services fundamental to the governance of a democratic society”  so that every vulnerable or marginalized customer must have access (access includes affordability) to safe and quality service even if that access reduces profits
      • Opposing further privatization of health care, specifically, since this sector has been so aggressively privatized over the past 25-to-50 years that as many as 60% or more of Americans may now be defined as “vulnerable” — at risk of medical debt, unable to afford care and/or without access to care, living with under-treated chronic disease and disability, and/or dying of preventable diseases.  In contrast to every other developed country, our life expectancy is falling and maternal morbidity rates remain double or triple other countries. As the national League has observed, regarding privatized healthcare, “The unfettered pursuit of profit is unhealthy.” 

In seeking to clarify rather than overhaul the national position, this Update follows a long tradition of building on the work that’s been done before; for example, the Health Care Update (adopted 2022) included explicit language for support of single-payer funding of health care and for adopting state-level programs in the absence of a national health care program — local and state Leagues had been refraining from advocacy because of confusion over what the national position supported.

4. Pro/Con on this Update

The Pro/Con chart will open in a new tab.

5. Leagues that have said they support this Update — to come

B.  Concurrence Statement (text to be adopted)

& Related Privatization Positions

C. How your League can support this Update initiative    

FOUR Actions (#1 and #2 are most important)

1. Have your League support adding this Update to the Convention Program — on the LWVUS Program Survey that will be posted on January 15 to the LWV Program Planning site and  due by March 10, 2026

    • Get on the agenda for your next board meeting (Click for 4 pages to print)
    • Provide a brief statement of support and then make a motion (e.g., “A local New York League, with the support of NY State and Vermont, is proposing an Update to the US Privatization position and I would like our League to support discussion and voting on it at Convention by adding it to the LWVUS Program Survey. Our support on the survey does not commit our delegates at Convention to support it.  ‘I move that we add support for this LWVPWM Privatization Update concurrence to the LWV US Program Survey.'” 

      • Here are instructions  and background you can use (4 pages including each of the below):
        1. Instructions and script for you
        2. Statement for Concurrence with PWM for Update 
        3. Illustration of how the Concurrence might update the current position 
        4. Instructions for filling out the Program Planning Survey
      • We ask all supporting Leagues to insert the same language to ensure that all Leagues that support it are counted.
      • We believe each League can offer 4 new “program items on the survey, if they plan and word-count carefully. 

2. Let us know that you have supported it so that we can keep a running tally of support

    • Email: LWV.Update4Convention@gmail.com

3. Share info about this Update and Promote it

    • to your State League
    • to other local Leagues in your state
    • to friends in other Leagues and to League special interest groups you belong to

4. Research local privatization issues

    • in your League’s footprint and in your state
    • ask if you’d like some pointers on how to do this to help your League support this
    • AND  let us know if you find something that really matters to you

D. Learn More — read, watch, listen

    1. Watch explainer video “Why concur with the LWV PWM Privatization Update at Convention 2026” presented to LWV Virginia 11/13/25 (Note summary of changes lasts 3 minutes, beginning at 6.30 minute mark — then 8 minutes of detailing them)
      • The presentation has sections:
        • 00:00 Introductions
        • 02:20 Agenda
        • 02:37 What Is Concurrence? What will it do?
        • 06:27 What would the proposed Update change?
        • 15:47 Is privatization actually a threat?
        • 20:25 How has the NYS League used this Update?
        • 27:05 How might your League use this Update?
        • 30:20 How to Support This Initiative — Where to Learn More 
      • Read the Deck for this Explainer
    2. The Privatization of Everything, by D. Cohen & A. Mikaelian, 2021, pp. 1-20 (Intro)
    3. Case Studies on Medicaid & PBMs
      1. Case Study on De-privatizing: Connecticut takes back Medicaid Managed Care (2012)
      2. Case studies of state governments de-privatizing pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) in Ohio & Kentucky
      •  

 E. Have Questions?

Do you have a critical local issue we could share?
Suggestions? 

Email: LWV.Update4Convention@gmail.com

THANK YOU!

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