Trump's disastrous Big Ugly Bill is an assault on the working poor

I invite you to take a moment and reflect on the last time you received a medical bill in the mail. Think about the times an invoice from routine bloodwork from an annual physical or charges from a past hospital visit that wasn't fully covered by your insurance found its way into your monthly budget and disrupted your latest travel plans or opportunities to save for your future.

- Marc H. Morial, President and CEO National Urban League

If that resonates with you in 2025, consider yourself fortunate. For 1 in 5 Americans and almost half of the children in this country, healthcare costs are more than a minor interruption in summer plans; they are the difference between eating and going hungry and in, some cases, life or death.

When Senator Joni Ernst told her constituents that “we are all going to die” in a heated town hall about the millions of Americans who would lose health care coverage under the budget she supported, she wasn't lying. Health economists from the University of Pennsylvania estimate that the original House bill's health provisions would lead to 51,000 preventable deaths per year. The current Senate bill before the House increases the Medicaid cuts to over $1 trillion.

In the bill that passed in the Senate this week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that nearly 12 million more Americans could become uninsured by 2034.

To put this into context, let’s break it down by the numbers.