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healthcare
Just to Be Clear: The Trump-GOP Gutting of Medicaid Will Kill People
The attacks on Medicaid aren’t just policy choices—they’re signing people’s death certificates before they ever see a physician.
Nov 16, 2025
This summer, Congress and President Trump cut over $1 trillion from Medicaid to help offset the cost of tax cuts for billionaires. Those Medicaid cuts are scheduled to start kicking in after next year’s midterms, so it’s time for everyone to start understanding the life and death consequences now.
This year, my adult daughter in rural Michigan was hospitalized multiple times with a raging infection of her pancreas, spleen, and gallbladder. Surgery saved my daughter’s life. And that surgery was possible because of Medicaid.
As a parent and grandparent, I do everything possible to protect the health and safety of my loved ones — just like you do. That doesn’t just mean taking care of things around the house or getting them to the doctor — it can also mean fighting against the policies that make people sick or deny them care.
When my kids were young, poor air quality and environmental hazards caused our family physical, mental, and financial anguish. Now my three adult children have serious medical issues, including seizures and pulmonary embolisms.
Millions of other Americans have health issues like these — and their lives will be at risk if they lose Medicaid coverage.
That’s what drove me to found the Black Appalachian Coalition to close race and gender health disparities. Our work focuses on communities throughout Appalachia, including in Kentucky, Ohio, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, New York, and West Virginia.
Through my work in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, I met Linda Brown — a staunch advocate for affordable health care, driven by personal experience.
Brown once had a medical emergency and spent nine days in the hospital. “I didn’t know if I would live, yet I never had to wonder how I would pay. Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act saved my life,” she said. Affordable health care “let me focus on healing, on breathing, on being a mother, instead of drowning in fear of medical bills.”
As Brown recovered, she felt hopeful. She could take care of herself and her son, and help others in the community. Now she’s a Black Appalachian Coalition trainer and supports people to share their story and point us towards solutions.
Now’s the time to start sharing stories like hers. Ten million Americans will lose health care coverage because of the federal cuts to Medicaid. Coupled with cuts to Affordable Care Act subsidies — the still unresolved sticking point of the recent government shutdown — up to 17 million Americans could lose care overall.
Without medical coverage and funding for health care institutions, people will lose access to maternal health care, mental health and drug treatment, and preventative and primary care.
Rural areas already experience slow care — but with the cuts, we will have no care. That’s because health care providers will cut services or shut down — especially in rural areas and low-income communities where hospitals are more dependent on patients with Medicaid coverage.
That will impact care even for people with traditional private insurance. We’ll see an increase in emergency room visits, and the burden of the costs will be shifted to already stretched communities.
The attacks on Medicaid aren’t just policy choices — they’re signing people’s death certificates before they ever see a physician. They’re denying people like my daughter — or someone you love — access to the treatments, prescriptions, and care that could save their lives.
With this experience in mind, I worked with 40 organizations to produce the Rural Policy Action Report, which provides a federal policy agenda — including on health care — to improve rural people’s lives.
I know I speak for my rural neighbors when I say we’re demanding that Congress reverse its cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, expand health care coverage, lower prescription drug prices, and ensure the access to care that all of us deserve.
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The Republican Health Care Apocalypse
The only people in America whose health care isn’t about to get much worse are billionaires, who can hop into their private helicopters to see their private doctors. The rest of us? It's time for us to fight like hell.
Nov 14, 2025
Republicans are obsessed with taking your health care away. This spring, they cut $1 trillion from Medicaid, all to give massive tax handouts to billionaires. For the last month and a half they shut down the government rather than prevent premiums from doubling on average for 24 million people in the Affordable Care Act marketplace. And they “won.”
The number of uninsured Americans is about to skyrocket, which is exactly what Republicans want. It is what they fight for every day; to steal your health care.
These cuts are devastating for seniors, who rely on Medicaid to pay for nursing homes and other long-term care (which typically isn’t covered by Medicare). They are also disastrous for Americans aged 50-64, many of whom are in the ACA marketplaces and will have the largest premium increases. Many will have no choice but to drop their health insurance and pray they don’t get too sick before they turn 65 and become eligible for Medicare—literally gambling with their lives.
Even if you’re not on Medicaid or the ACA, the Republican cuts will make your health care worse. Without the Medicaid dollars they need to survive, hospitals and nursing homes across the country are already closing their doors. Far more will close in the next few years, with rural areas and inner cities hit hardest.
Republicans are ideologically committed to destroying health care at the behest of their billionaire donors.
The hospitals that remain open will have to cut staff due to lower revenue—even as their ERs are flooded with newly uninsured patients who have nowhere else to go. That means if you get hit by a car, you’ll likely have to go to a hospital further away and wait longer to see a doctor. All thanks to Republicans.
The only people in America whose health care isn’t about to get much worse are billionaires, who can hop into their private helicopters to see their private doctors.
Democrats are demanding that Republicans back off their draconian health care cuts. That’s what the just-concluded government shutdown was all about—Democrats refusing to vote for a budget that doesn’t fix the coming health care apocalypse.
Some Democrats thought that Republicans would come to the negotiating table and figure out a health care fix, if only out of political self-interest. But Republicans are ideologically committed to destroying health care at the behest of their billionaire donors.
House Republican Leader Mike Johnson is refusing to bring an extension of the ACA subsidies, which would prevent premiums from skyrocketing, up for a vote.
This refusal is why House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has put forward a discharge petition to obtain a three-year extension of the ACA subsidies. If the petition gets 218 signers, it forces a floor vote which also needs 218 to pass. There are 214 Democrats in the House.
Republicans are betting that by dividing Americans against each other, they can duck the blame for the health care apocalypse they created. Let’s prove them wrong.
That means we need only FOUR Republicans to cross the aisle and we can get the subsidies to pass the House, putting pressure on the Senate.
It comes down to these 25 Republicans, who are in extremely tight races and whose constituents are getting hammered by spiking premiums and disastrous Medicaid cuts:
Juan Ciscomani (AZ-06)
Kevin Kiley (CA-03)
David Valadao (CA-22)
Darrell Issa (CA-48)
Gabe Evans (CO-08)
Cory Mills (FL-07)
María Elvira Salazar (FL-27)
Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01)
Zach Nunn (IA-03)
Bill Huizenga (MI-04)
Tom Barrett (MI-07)
Nicole Malliotakis (NY-11)
Tom Kean Jr. (NJ-07)
Mike Lawler (NY-17)
Mike Turner (OH-10)
Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-01)
Ryan Mackenzie (PA-07)
Rob Bresnahan (PA-08)
Scott Perry (PA-10)
Andy Ogles (TN-05)
Monica De La Cruz (TX-15)
Rob Wittman (VA-01)
Jen Kiggans (VA-02)
Bryan Steil (WI-01)
Derrick Van Orden (WI-03)
Republicans are betting that by dividing Americans against each other, they can duck the blame for the health care apocalypse they created. Let’s prove them wrong. That starts with flooding the phone lines of these Republicans and protesting outside their offices, to demand they save our health care.
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Tlaib Says 'Enough Democrats Chose to Roll Over' as Trump Signs Bill to End Shutdown
"The American people want us to fight back, not cave to Donald Trump for absolutely nothing in return," said Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
Nov 13, 2025
US President Donald Trump signed legislation to end the longest government shutdown in the nation's history late Wednesday after Republicans pushed the funding measure through the House with the support of six Democrats.
The 222 to 209 House vote marked the feeble end of Democrats' effort to force Republicans and Trump to back an extension of Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year. The standoff effectively concluded over the weekend, when eight members of the Senate Democratic caucus—with the tacit blessing of Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)—broke ranks and endorsed a deal to reopen the government.
The Democrats who voted with House Republicans on Wednesday were Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Jared Golden of Maine, Adam Gray of California, and Tom Suozzi of New York.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus—which unanimously voted against the funding measure on Wednesday—said in a statement that the deal all but cements premium hikes for tens of millions of Americans, as it lacks any concrete plan to extend the ACA subsidies.
"Premiums will double for an additional 20 million Americans under this so-called deal. Tens of thousands of people will die unnecessarily every year because of these extreme Medicaid cuts and skyrocketing healthcare costs," said Tlaib. "Our for-profit healthcare system is already broken, and instead of holding the line and fighting for healthcare as a human right, enough Democrats chose to roll over and make this affordability crisis worse."
Tlaib dismissed the Senate GOP's pledge to hold a vote on the ACA tax credits next month as "a worthless stunt that has no chance of being signed into law—if it’s even taken up."
“The American people want us to fight back, not cave to Donald Trump for absolutely nothing in return," said the Michigan Democrat. "Working people are already struggling and now an increase in premiums will make life worse for our families."
Tlaib offered her grim view of the material consequences of the shutdown deal as some Democrats tried to put a positive spin on the standoff, arguing that it succeeded in placing healthcare at the center of the national debate and laying bare Republicans' cruelty and utter lack of policy solutions.
"The silver lining of that agreement is that the issue doesn’t disappear," said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who opposed the deal.
Trump predictably wasted no time declaring victory and urging voters to punish Democrats for the shutdown in the 2026 midterms, even though Republicans control the government. Polling released earlier this month found that a majority of US voters blamed Trump and the GOP for the shutdown.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said following Wednesday's vote that "the public rightly recognizes that Trump and congressional Republicans are to blame for the longest government shutdown in history, exploding healthcare costs, and the cruel and needless punishment of 42 million Americans receiving nutrition support."
"The American people stood with Democrats as we stood firm and fought for Americans' right to healthcare," said Omar. "Over the past two months, Progressive Caucus members sounded the alarm on behalf of Americans in districts across the country who won’t be able to afford their insulin or chemotherapy due to the Republicans' healthcare crisis."
"As this shutdown ends," she added, "we are more committed than ever to the fight for healthcare as a human right."
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