On May 22, the House passed President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill Act” by a vote of 215 to 214. By now you have probably heard that the Medicaid cuts are expected to cause 8.6 million people to lose their health insurance, with the total program funding cuts estimated to be at least $700 billion over 10 years. That’s an average annual reduction of $70 billion in Medicaid spending – 12 times the $5.8 billion (in 2025 dollars) average annual cut enacted in 2005, previously the largest reduction in Medicaid spending.

Maybe you feel bad for people on Medicaid, or are angered that millions of people could lose their health insurance so that the President and Republicans in Congress can offset tax cuts for the wealthy. But if you are not on Medicaid, you have probably thought to yourself that you are glad your healthcare will not be affected. Hold that thought. The truth is that blowing a $700 billion hole in health spending on Medicaid services will degrade health system infrastructure and reduce the quality of care for all of us.

Here’s how.

Medicaid funds flow into virtually all the community hospitals in the US. These are the hospitals that we rely on for a wide range of health services — to stabilize us when we are having a stroke or heart attack; to treat a child having a severe asthma attack; to set a broken bone after a bicycle accident. Cuts this steep will have a noticeable effect on hospital revenues, and hospitals will face tough choices when they think about which services to eliminate — and even whether they can afford to stay open. Hold times on telephone calls will go up, wait times in hospital emergency rooms will increase, and distances traveled for some hospital services like delivery of a new baby will multiply.

Industry CEOs: Medicaid Cuts Will Cause Wider Harms

The alarm about the House bill has been sounded by four of the largest Catholic health systems – Ascension, Trinity Health, Providence and SSMHealth. As detailed by Alan Condon in Becker’s Hospital Review, the health systems’ CEOs point to the negative effects of the proposed cuts on an already strained health system, and how they will jeopardize access to health care for millions more patients than those who lose Medicaid coverage. Erik Wexler, president and CEO of Providence, pointed out that Medicaid cuts affect a broader population than just the subset on Medicaid. When programs and services become unsustainable, he argued, they will be forced to close, and access to care will be diminished for everyone.

Mike Slubowski, president and CEO of Trinity Health – a hospital system where Medicaid is the health insurance for 20 percent of patients across its 93 hospitals — worries that Medicaid cuts would exacerbate Trinity Health’s losses, as current Medicaid reimbursements fall short of the actual costs of treating Medicaid patients. The gap would widen, making it difficult to staff some programs, especially nursing homes and long-term care facilities where Medicaid is the predominant source of coverage.

Slubowski also pushed back on Republicans’ claims of widespread Medicaid fraud, waste, and abuse. He argued that it’s not possible to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid without hurting people more broadly.

Ascension president Eduardo Conrado pointed out that his health system provided care in 2024 to 6.1 million people. Of those, only 1.1 million – 750,000 covered by Medicaid and 350,000 uninsured or self-paid – would be directly affected by the proposed Medicaid cuts. But any reduction in hospital spending as a result of Medicaid cuts would reduce services for Ascension’s broader patient population as well. “Cuts of this scale,” he said, “would deepen financial pressure on hospitals, shift even more burden to the private sector, and limit access for everyone — not just those covered through Medicaid. Cutting critical services make it harder to hire and keep caregivers, risk hospital closures and limit states’ ability to fund Medicaid using proven tools like provider tax.”

Joe Hodges, the regional lead executive and president of SSMHealth’s Oklahoma/Mid-Missouri market –  which includes large rural areas – noted that 70 percent of Oklahoma hospitals operate at a loss, as do 87 percent of those in Kansas. “It is a crisis in rural healthcare,” Hodges said. “Any challenges that are associated with taking away access or funding to rural hospitals will make them even more vulnerable.”

Labor Leaders Decry Effects of Medicaid Cuts

It’s not only healthcare CEOs raising the alarm about the Republican bill. Union leaders are speaking out about the harms the Big Beautiful Bill will cause. Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, points out that cuts to health care including Medicaid in the bill “will slash nearly 500,000 care jobs in 2026 alone, forcing hospitals, clinics and nursing homes – especially in rural and lower-income communities – to close.”

Nancy Hagan, president of National Nurses United union, rejects cuts to Medicaid and other social support programs and noted that nurses will not give up the fight for patients and for public health: “Nurses believe in a society where we take care of one another, not abandon people who are born or become disabled, or happen to work a job that is not financially valued.”

April Verrett, president of the Service Workers International Union, noted that Republicans in the House passed legislation that will rip healthcare from families to make the mega rich even richer. Instead, she argued, “we should make costs go down for families, not set them up for skyrocketing bills. We should raise wages and make life more secure for working families, not pull the rug out from under them.”

The House bill will cut core services and reduce their availability not only to the subpopulation of Medicaid patients but also to the broader patient population. They will affect not only people, but the health system’s infrastructure – the hospitals, clinics, doctors, and the clinical and other staff needed to care for patients.

The “Big Beautiful Bill” now goes to the Senate, which has promised to revisit these draconian spending cuts. Preserving Medicaid’s funding is essential to maintaining the capabilities of the US health system.

This first appeared on CERP.

The post How Medicaid Cuts Will Hurt Everyone appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.