We've Never Seen Health Care Cuts This Big
A preliminary estimate from the Congressional Budget Office projects that the bill would reduce federal spending for Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act's provisions by more than $1 trillion over a decade, resulting in nearly 12 million more people becoming uninsured by 2034.
It comes as other changes to health insurance are looming. Tax credits to subsidize the premiums for people who get their insurance through Obamacare marketplaces — first passed by Democrats during the Covid pandemic in 2021 — are set to expire at the end of 2025. If Republicans and Mr. Trump do not agree to extend the tax credits, which appears to be their inclination, out-of-pocket premiums for these enrollees will increase by over 75 percent on average. Because some won't be able to pay the higher premiums, the budget office expects four million will end up uninsured.
An additional roughly one million people are expected to lose coverage as a result of recent Trump administration regulations that make it harder to sign up for coverage through the Affordable Care Act. One consulting firm estimates that enrollment in marketplace plans will ultimately drop by about half.
In total, the policy bill and these other changes could lead to a staggering 17 million more people uninsured. By one estimate, the potential increase in the number of people uninsured, both through Republican actions and inaction, would erase almost three-quarters of the gains in coverage from the Affordable Care Act.
It is rare to see public benefits taken away from people once they're in place, and this level of cuts to health insurance would be extraordinary.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Times
7 minutes ago
- New York Times
The Senate and the Supreme Court
The Senate narrowly passed Republicans' sprawling bill to slash taxes and social safety net programs. Vice President JD Vance cast the tiebreaking vote, after three Republican senators — Susan Collins, Thom Tillis and Rand Paul — voted no. The bill extends roughly $3.8 trillion in tax cuts enacted during Trump's first term and increases funding for border security and the military. It cuts about $1.1 trillion from health care programs, mainly Medicaid, which experts estimate will cause nearly 12 million Americans to lose coverage. The bill, which could affect millions of Americans, is a major political gamble, Carl Hulse writes. The House must now decide whether to pass the Senate's version of the bill or try to reconcile it with its own. Any delays could mean that Congress misses the July 4 deadline that Trump set. The Morning's readers were interested in the bill yesterday (it was our most-clicked link). Here's more from Times reporters who were in the Capitol: In all, senators voted 49 times during a 27-hour marathon session. They wore fluffy blankets and pullover sweatshirts inside the chilly chamber. Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, cast a deciding vote for the bill after winning carveouts for her state. 'Do I like this bill? No,' she told NBC News afterward. 'But I tried to take care of Alaska's interests.' Trump and Elon Musk returned to jousting on social media about the legislation. The bill's policies could inflict major financial pain on poor Americans. Republicans have insisted that the policy package will help seniors and the middle class. Here's a fact check. Covering the court The end of June is some combination of Christmas and Tax Day for Adam Liptak, who has covered the Supreme Court for The Times since 2008. That's when the justices release a dizzying array of rulings: This term's major cases, some of which were decided earlier in the year, touched on guns, porn, police tactics, religion, citizenship, L.G.B.T.Q. rights, vapes and TikTok. How the Supreme Court voted in the last two terms Last term 5-4 6-3 7-2 8-1 9-0 This term 5-4 6-3 7-2 8-1 9-0 Last term 5-4 6-3 7-2 8-1 9-0 This term 5-4 6-3 7-2 8-1 9-0 Note: Chart shows nine-person decisions that were orally argued and signed. Sources: Lee Epstein and Andrew D. Martin, Washington University in St. Louis; Michael J. Nelson, Penn State from the Supreme Court Database By The New York Times Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Bloomberg
12 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Trump Tax Bill Faces GOP Resistance Ahead of House Vote
President Donald Trump's multitrillion-dollar tax bill is meeting resistance in the House as Republican lawmakers threaten to defy Trump and sink his domestic agenda. Tyler Kendall reports on Bloomberg Television. (Source: Bloomberg)
Medscape
12 minutes ago
- Medscape
Emotional Response to Music May Enhance Memory Specificity
Music that evokes an emotional response may influence the specificity of memory recall, new research suggests. Investigators found that participants who were shown a series of images of everyday items before listening to music were more likely to remember only general details of the photos if they experienced a more emotional response to the music, while those who had a moderate emotional response were more likely to recall specific details. Stephanie L. Leal, PhD 'Most people think that emotional things are better remembered, but they actually aren't. It's just parts of the memory that are affected, not the whole memory,' co-investigator Stephanie L. Leal, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Integrative Biology & Physiology at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), told Medscape Medical News . 'One size doesn't fit all when it comes to music and memory.' Interestingly, familiarity with a song was not associated with either general or detailed memory. 'We played the same songs for everybody, but importantly, everyone responded differently. So I think personalization and taking individual preferences into account is going to be important for interventions,' said Leal, who is also director of the Neuroscience of Memory, Mood, and Aging Laboratory at UCLA. The findings were published online on July 23 in The Journal of Neuroscience . Memory Complexities As previously reported by Medscape Medical News , previous research has shown that both music appreciation and participations are tied to improvement in executive function and memory. For this study, researchers wanted to dive into the complexities of memory, including the possible connection between music and differing aspects of memory. 'We tend to remember more of the gist of something emotional that happened and not as much of the details. So we wanted to see if music could boost certain parts of memory but not all of the parts,' she said. Many previous music studies have included older individuals, especially those with dementia. For this project, investigators chose instead to assess a younger population because they wanted to use their data as a 'baseline' before moving on to further research in groups that are older and/or have impaired conditions such as depression or Alzheimer's disease, Leal said. 'We wanted to see what happens in healthy people first and then apply it to other populations,' she said. The study included 130 healthy undergraduate students between the ages of 18 and 35 years from Rice University, Houston. During the initial phase of memory formation — called the 'encoding' phase — each participant was shown 128 images of common household objects and asked to choose whether the object should be considered as an indoor or outdoor item. Participants then donned headphones and listened to 10 minutes of classical music pieces, ambient soundscapes, or silence while they filled out questionnaires about their medical history. After the music ended, participants spent about 20 minutes filling out additional questionnaires, including a rating of the music or sounds they heard on the basis of emotional arousal, positive or negative reaction, or familiarity. They then viewed a set of 192 images that included some they hadn't seen before (foils) and others that were identical (targets) or similar (lures) to the photos viewed earlier. Participants were asked to classify an image as old or new, allowing the researchers to measure target recognition — a measure of general memory — or lure discrimination — a measure of detailed memory. Big-Picture Recall General recall of the images was greater among those who experienced either low or high emotional response to music than among those who experienced moderate changes in emotional arousal ( P for both < .001). More detailed memories were reported by those who reported only a moderate emotional response to music than those who reported a low or high emotional response ( P for both < .001). There were no significant associations between memory of the images and song familiarity or whether a song was happy or sad. 'Overall, music modulated both general and detailed memory, but individual differences in emotional response were crucial — participants listened to the same music yet responded differently,' the investigators wrote. 'These findings suggest that music interventions may not uniformly enhance memory, emphasizing the need for personalized approaches in treating memory and mood impairments,' they added. The research suggests that a high emotional response may cloud details more than a moderate response. 'Yes, the idea is that if something is very emotionally arousing, maybe we don't want to remember the details associated with it. Maybe we just want to remember that general feeling or the bigger impact of that event, whether it's positive or negative,' Leal said. 'Maybe we just want to take the 'big picture' from that.' Early Days Commenting on the findings for Medscape Medical News , Daniel L. Bowling, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford School of Medicine, Palo Alto, California, noted that the study 'follows the general trend' of research that breaks down large concepts, such as memory, into specific features. Daniel L. Bowling, PhD Bowling, who is also director of the Music and Brain Health Lab at Stanford, was not involved with the current study. 'This showed different levels of responses to music that were differentially related to varying types of memory that you might want to target,' Bowling said. For example, if a clinician's purpose is cognitive training, with more of an emphasis on details, 'you might want more moderate levels of [emotional] arousal. But if you want more big-picture stuff, which could be critical when asking people about their life, then higher levels of arousal may be better,' he added. He noted that because the researchers used almost a 'pretreatment,' with music used before the recall task, it would be interesting to know if using such a pretreatment before taking a test could possibly improve performance. There are interventions, some of which Bowling is involved with, that are looking at supporting arousal and attention during studying. A controlled study comparing these things and looking systematically into effects on different types of memory would be helpful, 'but we're really at the beginning of figuring all of this stuff out,' he said. Although the current study has some limitations and needs to be replicated, 'any kind of talk toward systematic effects of different musical parameters or emotional modeling starts to help us bring this into the scientific-medical realm. And that's a real strength here,' Bowling concluded.
