A proposed $793 billion cut to federal Medicaid spending is projected to cause 16,642 premature deaths among adults each year as Americans lose coverage, according to a study published June 16 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The study from researchers at Boston-based Harvard Medical School and the City University of New York’s Hunter College cites the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates of insurance losses due to the Medicaid cuts.
In May, the House of Representatives passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a more than 1,000-page budget reconciliation bill that proposes significant Medicaid cuts and ACA reforms. Nearly 8 million people will lose Medicaid coverage by 2034 if the cuts in the bill become law, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.
Using CBO estimates, Harvard and CUNY researchers calculated health harms of these insurance losses using findings from peer-reviewed analyses of the mortal (and other) effects of previous Medicaid reforms.
Study authors examined the overall effects of Medicaid provisions in the current House bill, as well as three individual Medicaid reform options (such as work requirements for beneficiaries) and three others that were previously proposed by House Republicans, which could end up in final legislation.
Based on their analyses, Medicaid cuts in the current House bill will cause:
- More than 1.9 million people to lose access to a physician
- More than 1.3 million people to forego needed medications
- More than 1.2 million people to incur medical debt
- 246,000 people to be be turned away from medical care because of medical debts
- 380,000 women to miss recommended mammograms
Editor’s note: The analyses do not include deaths and other harms that could result from non-Medicaid provisions in the bill, such as reduced coverage under the ACA, cuts to food subsidies under the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program, and reduced nursing home staffing.
“The Medicaid cuts in the House Bill will strip healthcare from millions of Americans,” said Dr. Adam Gaffney, MD, a critical care physician, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and lead author of the study, in a news release shared with Becker’s.
“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. 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,” he added.
The full study is available here.
