Medical Debts Will Increase Under Republicans

Republicans generally don’t care about medical debt. They consider it their primary mission to lower federal spending. They count on Medicaid recipients being a pretty passive bunch — many do not vote at all, much less vote about health care programs.

The Republican One Big Beautiful Bill Act would slash $1.1 trillion from Medicaid, the ACA, and other health care programs over 10 years. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that 14.2 million people will lose their coverage due to those cuts. That number includes 6.5 million losing Medicaid, and 7.7 million losing ACA marketplace coverage.

 Families will lose coverage in three ways:

• Medicaid Work Requirements: Despite the poor track record of Medicaid work requirements, Republicans have uniformly supported adding this unnecessary bureaucratic burden to the program nationwide. It will cause five  million people to lose coverage and will not increase employment rates.

• Medicaid Eligibility and Enrollment Restrictions: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act would add other hurdles for families to get coverage through Medicaid. For example, it will reverse Biden-era efforts to make Medicaid enrollment simpler and automatic.  

• ACA Cuts: The ACA caps the cost of health coverage at 8.5% of a family’s income (or less for families with lower incomes). That cap is set to expire and won’t benefit families during the next open enrollment, which starts in November, unless Congress acts very very soon.. 

Less Coverage Means More Medical Debt

Republican health care policies will increase the number of people in families with medical debt by 5 million.

The problem is worse for middle-class families —  because they are more likely to take on medical debt than the poor, who more often skip the care they need altogether.