In a recent CNBC interview, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said the people who lose Medicaid coverage under the Republican-backed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” will merely transition to employer-sponsored health care: “It’s not kicking people off Medicaid. It’s transitioning from Medicaid to employer-provided health care. So yes, we’ve got 10 million people that are not going to be on Medicaid, but they then are going to be on employer-provided health care.”

What Senator Lankford clearly doesn’t understand is that those most impacted by the Medicaid cuts he supports are often workers in industries that are less likely to offer employer-based coverage and have more volatile employment and hours. Only 47 percent of workers in the restaurant industry have employer-based coverage and 54 percent in the construction industry.¹ The majority of those 10 million workers Senator Lankford referenced won’t be able to ‘transition’ to employer-provided insurance – it simply does not exist.

The Medicaid cuts proposed in the GOP budget bill as it currently stands would cut nearly 2 million restaurant workers from Medicaid, which is a whopping 21.8 percent of the industry as a whole. This is more than all of the restaurant workers in the state of California (1.4 million in April 2025).² The construction industry would lose the second most Medicaid beneficiaries (1.5 million). The workers that would be most impacted by these cuts are from across the economy, from construction to grocery stores to home health services to hotels.

Notes.