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trump tax cuts
Healthcare Giants Have Raked in 'Sick Profits' From Trump Tax Cuts While Stiffing Patients: Report
The report found that seven of America's biggest healthcare companies have collectively dodged $34 billion in taxes as a result of Trump's 2017 tax law while making patient care worse.
Sep 04, 2025
President Donald Trump's tax policies have allowed the healthcare industry to rake in "sick profits" by avoiding tens of billions of dollars in taxes and lowering the quality of care for patients, according to a report out Wednesday.
The report, by the advocacy groups Americans for Tax Fairness and Community Catalyst, found that "seven of America's biggest healthcare corporations have dodged over $34 billion in collective taxes since the enactment of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that Republicans recently succeeded in extending."
The study examined four health insurance companies—Centene, Cigna, Elevance (formerly Anthem), and Humana; two for-profit hospital chains—HCA Holdings and Universal Health Services; and the CVS Healthcare pharmacy conglomerate.
It found that these companies' average profits increased by 75%, from around $21 billion before the tax bill to about $35 billion afterward, and yet their federal tax rate was about the same.
This was primarily due to the 2017 law's slashing of the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, a change that was cheered on by the healthcare industry and continued with this year's GOP tax legislation. The legislation also loosened many tax loopholes and made it easier to move profits to offshore tax shelters.
The report found that Cigna, for instance, saved an estimated $181 million in taxes on the $2.5 billion it held in offshore accounts before the law took effect.
The law's supporters, including those in the healthcare industry, argued that lowering corporate taxes would allow companies to increase wages and provide better services to patients. But the report found that "healthcare corporations failed to use their tax savings to lower costs for customers or meaningfully boost worker pay."
Instead, they used those windfalls primarily to increase shareholder payouts through stock buybacks and dividends and to give fat bonuses to their top executives.
Stock buybacks increased by 42% after the law passed, with Centene purchasing an astonishing average of 20 times more of its own shares in the years following its enactment than in the years before. During the first seven years of the law, dividends for shareholders increased by 133% to an average of $5.6 billion.
Pay for the seven companies' half-dozen top executives increased by a combined $100 million, 42%, on average. This is compared to the $14,000 pay increase that the average employee at these companies received over the same period, which is a much more modest increase of 24%.
And contrary to claims that lower taxes would allow companies to improve coverage or patient care, the opposite has occurred.
While data is scarce, the rate of denied insurance claims is believed to have risen since the law went into effect.
The four major insurers' Medicare Advantage plans were found to frequently deny claims improperly. In the case of Centene, 93% of its denials for prior authorizations were overturned once patients appealed them, which indicates that they may have been improper. The others were not much better: 86% of Cigna's denials were overturned, along with 71% for Elevance/Anthem, and 65% for Humana.
The report said that such high rates of denials being overturned raise "questions about whether Medicare Advantage plans are complying with their coverage obligations or just reflexively saying 'no' in the hopes there will be no appeal."
Salespeople for the Cigna-owned company EviCore, which insurers hire to review claims, have even boasted that they help companies reduce their costs by increasing denials by 15%, part of a model that ProPublica has called the "denials for dollars business." Their investigation in 2024 found that insurers have used EviCore to evaluate whether to pay for coverage for over 100 million people.
And while paying tens of millions to their executives, both HCA and Universal Health Services—which each saved around $5.5 billion from Trump's tax law—have been repeatedly accused of overbilling patients while treating them in horrendous conditions.
" Congress should demand both more in tax revenue and better patient care from these highly profitable corporations," Americans for Tax Fairness said in a statement. "Healthcare corporation profitability should not come before quality of patient care. In healthcare, more than almost any other industry, the search for ever higher earnings threatens the wellbeing and lives of the American people."
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'As Expensive as It Is Cruel': CBO Says Trump-GOP Budget Law Will Explode Deficit by $4.1 Trillion
"It's a disgraceful law that forces working families to pay the price so the ultra-rich can profit," said Rep. Brendan Boyle.
Aug 05, 2025
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on Monday said the Republican budget package that President Donald Trump signed into law last month will push up interest rates and add at least $4.1 trillion to the deficit over the next decade—largely due to the measure's massive tax cuts for the rich and large corporations.
According to the CBO, growing interest payments on the national debt will account for $718 billion of the estimated $4.1 trillion total deficit increase. Economist Josh Bivens has noted that it would cost the federal government $4.1 trillion to send a $12,000 check to every adult and child in the United States.
If temporary tax provisions of the highly regressive Trump-GOP law are made permanent, the estimated deficit impact would soar to nearly $5 trillion, CBO Director Phillip Swagel—a Republican—wrote in a letter to Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) on Monday.
"Each and every analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office continues to show the same result regardless of how you look at it: this bill explodes the debt by trillions of dollars to fund tax breaks for billionaires," Merkley, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, said in a statement. "Republicans can't spin the fact that this bill is bad policy that kicks more than 15 million people off of their health insurance, will force millions of kids to go hungry, and explodes the national debt by $5 trillion over the next 10 years—pushing the cost of this bill onto future generations to ensure billionaires can pay less in taxes."
"It is the height of hypocrisy coming from the party that claims to be fiscally responsible," Merkley added.
The deeply unpopular Republican law includes the largest cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance in U.S. history, alongside major handouts to profitable corporations—including oil and gas firms, pharmaceutical giants, and tech companies.
Zion Research Group estimates that 369 companies in the S&P 500 are set to reap a combined $148 billion in cash tax savings this year as a result of the Trump-GOP law, which extends tax breaks in Republicans' 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Just four companies—Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft—are expected to rake in 38% of the $148 billion total.
The poorest 40% of Americans, meanwhile are set to see their taxes rise next year under the Trump-GOP bill, mostly due to Republican lawmakers' refusal to extend Affordable Care Act tax credits.
Wow, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google are getting 38% of the total cash savings from the part of Trump’s tax law going to corporations. That’s $15.7B to Amazon alone! https://t.co/l9AZth20RJ pic.twitter.com/XFVekRmrrp
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) August 5, 2025
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, said the new CBO analysis "yet again confirms Republicans' Big Ugly Law is as expensive as it is cruel."
"It explodes the deficit by over $4 trillion to pay for massive tax breaks for billionaires, while ripping healthcare and food assistance away from millions of Americans," said Boyle. "It's a disgraceful law that forces working families to pay the price so the ultra-rich can profit."
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Trump-GOP Budget Bill Will Give Top 1% Over $1 Trillion in Tax Breaks: Analysis
The amount set to flow to a "tiny sliver of affluent families" over the next decade is roughly equal to the Medicaid cuts included in the Republican bill, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
Jul 03, 2025
An analysis released Thursday estimates that the Republican legislation on the brink of final passage in Congress would deliver over $1 trillion in combined tax breaks to the richest 1% of Americans over the next decade—an amount roughly equal to the bill's unprecedented cuts to Medicaid.
The new analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), which utilizes data from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation and other sources, finds that the "tiny sliver of affluent families" in the top 1% of the U.S. income distribution will "receive tax cuts totaling $1.02 trillion over the next decade."
The centerpiece of Trump's megabill is a trillion-dollar tax cut to the wealthy, paid for by increasing the national debt and cutting public services. pic.twitter.com/ISr2XuIdJQ
— ITEP (@iteptweets) July 3, 2025
ITEP has previously shown that the Republican bill's tax cuts—largely extensions of expiring provisions of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law—would be highly skewed to the wealthy, with the small percentage of households at the very top receiving significantly more in total tax breaks than middle- and lower-income Americans.
"Sixty-nine percent of the net tax cuts would go to the richest fifth of Americans in 2026, only 11% would go to the middle fifth of Americans, and less than 1% would go to the poorest fifth," the group found. "The $107 billion in net tax cuts going to the richest 1% next year would exceed the amount going to the entire bottom 60% of taxpayers."
ITEP's new analysis was released as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) wrapped up a record-breaking, eight-hour-plus speech against the GOP legislation, which delayed a final vote on the measure. Republicans are expected to pass the unpopular bill on Thursday.
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