08/08/2025
If Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act goes into effect as written, Annie Lowrey argues, “sick babies will end up paying for tax cuts for the wealthy.” https://theatln.tc/LUiPzPep
This summer, Congress passed Trump’s sweeping second-term domestic legislation. Although the White House insists the legislation doesn’t cut Medicaid, Lowrey writes, the Congressional Budget Office foresees that the law will drain close to $1 trillion of Medicaid’s financing in the next decade and cause 11 million Americans to lose their insurance coverage. “Experts anticipate a cascade of effects,” Lowrey continues. “The most fragile sectors of our health-care system will be in danger of collapsing. And pediatric care might be first on that list.”
Experts warn that dropping parents from Medicaid will mean dropping kids, even if those children continue to qualify in their own right. Kids without insurance are less likely to have a pediatrician monitoring their well-being and development. “They’re more likely to be sick, less likely to get immunizations and prescription medications, less likely to be treated for severe health conditions, and more likely to be hospitalized,” Lowrey writes. “They are also more likely to die before reaching adulthood.”
Pediatric care has already become concentrated in specialty children’s hospitals that cannot meet the existing demand, especially in low-income and rural areas, Lowrey continues. What institutions exist are fragile: Nonprofit children’s hospitals have profit margins of 2.7 percent, versus 6.4 percent for all hospitals.
“The system is a rickety structure, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act a hurricane-force wind,” Lowrey continues. “With fewer kids covered by Medicaid, revenue per patient will go down, giving health systems a yet-greater incentive to focus on providing care to adults and seniors; hospitals will close, affecting not only kids with Medicaid but all children.”
🎨: Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Sources: Nenov / Getty; Getty.
