{"id":22681,"date":"2025-06-28T20:18:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T20:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/22681\/"},"modified":"2025-06-28T20:18:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-28T20:18:14","slug":"house-budget-bill-would-kick-15-million-people-off-health-insurance-and-damage-local-economies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/22681\/","title":{"rendered":"House budget bill would kick 15 million people off health insurance and damage local economies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update:<\/strong> On June 4, 2025, the Congressional Budget Office released a new estimate that as many as 16 million people would lose their health insurance under the House\u2019s budget bill<\/a>.<\/p>\n

House Republicans wanted to find a way to defray the cost of the tax cuts they passed for the richest households in the country. They chose to slash programs helping some of the most vulnerable families\u2014including Medicaid and subsidies that let people buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This direct transfer of income from vulnerable families to the richest can be summarized in a striking symmetry: If the bill becomes law, the annual cuts to Medicaid would average over $70 billion<\/a> in coming years\u2014the same amount millionaires and billionaires would gain in tax cuts<\/a> each year.<\/p>\n

These health care spending cuts would lead directly to millions of people losing health insurance. A widely cited Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate<\/a> of 13.7 million people losing coverage was preliminary, and the CBO noted that more-precise estimates to come would \u201csomewhat further increase the estimated number of people without health insurance.\u201d More recently, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated coverage losses of at least 15 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The cuts to Medicaid would also damage local economies and workers throughout the United States. Even during times when the national unemployment rate is low, tens of millions live in weaker local economies with higher county unemployment rates and far less ability to weather sharp spending shocks like a Medicaid cutback would provide. In fact, a disproportionate share of the House bill\u2019s Medicaid cuts would almost surely fall exactly on these weaker local economies. We estimate that roughly 27 million workers are in these weaker local economies, and that Medicaid cuts could depress local spending enough to force the loss of 850,000 jobs.<\/p>\n

Download the Unemployment rates and Medicaid coverage by US county spreadsheet<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Republicans believe their strongest argument in favor of the health insurance cuts in this grotesquely unequal bill is that they\u2019re simply demanding that able-bodied adults receiving Medicaid must work. Every part of this argument falls apart once the details of this bill\u2019s cuts and their ripple effects are examined. Concretely:<\/p>\n