Dive Brief:
Cuts to Medicaid backed by Republicans on the Hill would lead to between 8,000 and nearly 25,000 avoidable deaths each year, according to new research.
The study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine Tuesday was based on the reconciliation megabill passed by the House last month. It comes one day after the Senate released its own version of the legislation, which includes even steeper cuts to Medicaid.
As such, the latest iteration of the bill would likely increase the number of avoidable deaths. Study authors noted their estimates could already be conservative.
Dive Insight:
The uninsured rate will increase by at least 7.6 million people. More than 1.9 million Americans will lose access to their doctor. Over 1.2 million people will be saddled with medical debt. More than 380,000 women will be forced to forego mammograms.
These are some of the concerning predictions from the study, which was carried out by researchers at Harvard Medical School, the City University of New York’s Hunter College and consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen. The research joins a growing body of evidence warning of drastic repercussions from healthcare provisions in reconciliation legislation that Republicans are currently hammering out on the Hill, called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
However, it’s one of the first pieces of research highlighting an increase in premature deaths from the GOP bill.
The study said its estimates are based on peer-reviewed analyses of the effects of prior Medicaid reforms, along with estimates of the bill’s effects from the House Budget Committee and the Congressional Budget Office.
“In the ICU, I see what happens when patients do not get the regular care they need: they get sicker, sometimes gravely or even mortally ill,” Dr. Adam Gaffney, a critical care physician and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said in a statement.
“If the Senate goes along with the House’s Medicaid cuts, hundreds of safety-net hospitals and clinics will be forced to close or limit their care, and medically-preventable deaths will soar,” Gaffney, the lead author of the study, said.
Republican leadership in the Senate did go along with the House’s Medicaid cuts — and in some cases made them steeper, citing the need to curb fraud, waste and abuse in the safety-net program. Republicans are under pressure to pass the legislation, which aims to find savings to continue tax cuts from President Donald Trump’s first term by cutting government programs like Medicaid.
Draft legislation released by the Senate Finance Committee on Monday would extend work requirements proposed by the House to a greater number of Medicaid recipients, requiring parents of teens — a group exempted from the work mandate in the House’s legislation — to also log work, education or volunteering hours to stay enrolled.
The Senate’s bill also includes more restrictions on provider taxes and state-directed payments, mechanisms that allow states to draw down more federal Medicaid funds and direct them to providers.
The upper house’s version of the megabill maintained the House’s proposed $35 co-pay for select services for some Medicaid patients above the poverty line, and kept stricter eligibility verification processes in place for Americans in Medicaid plans.
However, it waters down policies targeting pharmacy benefit managers and does not include a provision linking annual Medicare payment updates for physicians to a metric of medical cost inflation. It also eliminates the House’s proposed changes to health savings accounts.
Democrats, provider groups and patient advocates slammed the Senate Finance Committee’s text after its release. “The Senate just made a bad bill worse,” Chip Kahn, the president and CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals, said in a statement Monday.
The House’s version of the bill was already deeply unpopular with Americans. Nearly two-thirds of voters view the GOP legislation unfavorably, according to a poll released Tuesday by health policy research firm KFF.
The changes to the reconciliation bill could complicate its chance of passage in the Senate by alienating more moderate Republicans concerned about impacts like steep losses of health insurance among their constituents.
Republican leadership is aiming to get the bill to Trump’s desk for his signature by July 4.
