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While Slashing Food Aid and Healthcare, GOP Advances Trillion-Dollar Military Budget

Brett Wilkins

Republicans in both houses of Congress voted Thursday to advance President Donald Trump’s request for record-high US military funding for 2027, prompting rebuke from Democrats and consumer advocates who decried the GOP’s deep cuts to social safety net programs amid an ongoing affordability crisis.

The Senate Armed Services Committee voted 18-9 to advance the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2027. Meanwhile, the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee advanced the Fiscal Year 2027 Defense Appropriations Bill during a closed-door markup. The House bill provides $1.072 trillion for the Pentagon and other military-related activities, a $234 billion increase from this year’s enacted level.

The Trump administration’s broader national security proposal requests nearly $1.5 trillion in total defense-related spending for 2027, which includes $350 billion in supplemental funding for munitions production, shipbuilding, missile defense, drones, artificial intelligence, and other long-term military programs. Trump wants Congress to use the budget reconciliation process to secure the additional funding. However, GOP lawmakers are wary to do so for a third time; just this week, Republicans used reconciliation to pass $70 billion in new funding for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.

“This year, the majority has written a Defense Appropriations Act that provides the department with over a trillion dollars—an unprecedented sum. But this level of defense spending comes at the cost of cuts to domestic investments like education and workforce training, as well as international diplomacy,” Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Ranking Member Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) said in a statement.

“President Trump said, ‘Jump,’ and Republicans in Congress said, ‘How high?’ Meanwhile, Republicans are proposing nearly $13 billion in cuts to domestic programs that provide relief for working families struggling to stay afloat as costs keep rising,” the congresswoman added. “The American people are begging for relief from high prices, but the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are deaf to their pleas.”

In addition to increasing the national debt by an estimated $6.9 trillion over the next decade, Trump is seeking over $70 billion in proposed domestic cuts, including the elimination of the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, sharp cuts in student aid, ending the Job Corps, slashing medical research and public health programs and Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance, reducing mental health and substance abuse programs, and halving Environmental Protection Agency funding.

These and other proposed reductions follow the enactment of the biggest cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program in the programs’ histories under the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by Trump last July. The OBBBA cuts were made to help fund trillions of dollars in tax reductions that disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans.

Robert Weisman, co-president of the consumer advocacy watchdog Public Citizen, noted significant opposition to Trump’s proposed $234 billion increase in Pentagon spending for 2027.

“There is a rising tide of Democratic and Republican opposition to Trump’s illegal Iran war and massive proposed increases to the Pentagon budget,” Weissman said Thursday, pointing to the “dozens” of lawmakers who voted against the additional spending during committee sessions, and the “bipartisan majority of the House” that “voted in support of the war powers resolution that directs Trump to end his war on Iran.”

“Trump has repeatedly stated that he doesn’t care about childcare, inflation, or addressing the needs of the American people,” Weissman continued. “Instead, he is seeking an overall $600 billion annual increase in Pentagon spending that would raise the total Pentagon budget to over $1.5 trillion.”

“The American people are demanding Congress block Trump’s attempts to increase the Pentagon budget,” he said. “This means voting against his National Defense Authorization Act, rejecting any Iran war supplemental funding bill, and blocking his proposed third reconciliation bill.”

“The money that Trump wants to burn on war should instead be spent on the needs of the American people, including restoring funding for healthcare, food, housing, and climate action,” Weissman added.

[Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Courtesy: Common Dreams, a US non-profit news portal.]

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The Hidden Cost of the U.S. Military: The Real Budget Is Far Larger Than Reported

Gisela Cernadas, John Bellamy Foster, and David Vine

U.S. President Donald Trump has proposed a $1.5 trillion military budget for the fiscal year 2027, which would increase by 44 percent the acknowledged budget for 2026. While a roughly $500 billion increase would be unprecedented in modern U.S. history, the idea that the military budget only recently hit $1 trillion is incorrect. U.S. military spending has exceeded $1 trillion for many years. Adding $500 billion (and potentially $200 billion more to fund war in Iran), as the president has proposed, would take the total military budget up to $2 trillion to $3 trillion.

A new report from the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), written by David Vine, John Bellamy Foster and Gisela Cernadas, argues that this widely reported number dramatically understates the true cost of maintaining the U.S. military. Using five different methodologies, the report estimates that total military spending in 2025 was between $1.5 trillion and $1.8 trillion and could be as high as $2.3 trillion when interest payments associated with military-related debt are included. The report concludes that the United States has been spending well above $1 trillion on military activities for many years, contrary to the common perception that this threshold was only recently crossed.

According to the analysis conducted by the POGO, the Hartung/Smithberger methodology produces the highest base estimate at $1,766,172,000,000, followed by the Wheeler approach at $1,727,634,000,000 and the figure reported by USAspending.gov at $1,717,989,509,643. The Cernadas/Foster and National Priorities Project methodologies yield comparatively lower base estimates of $1,494,236,125,000 and $1,477,081,000,000, respectively. When interest is incorporated, the totals increase substantially, ranging from $1,713,283,160,060 under the National Priorities Project methodology to $2,284,383,842,468 under the Cernadas/Foster approach. It should be noted that the National Priorities Project figure focuses on discretionary spending and excludes mandatory forms of spending; were the latter included, this estimate would align far more closely with the others.

Whether intentionally or otherwise, Congress, presidents, and the Pentagon have hidden the true size of the U.S. military budget for decades. Journalists, think tank analysts, academics, and other experts have, with rare exceptions, perpetuated the problem by reporting only a portion of true military spending; most are unaware of the costs they’re overlooking.

The problem with most conventional reporting is that there are hundreds of billions of dollars in military spending outside the Pentagon’s annual budget appropriated by Congress. Even a generally authoritative source of global military spending data such as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) underestimates U.S. spending by overlooking significant sums outside what Trump calls the Department of War and related budgets.

One major example is nuclear weapons spending, which represented around $33.5 billion in net spending for FY 2025. Although nuclear forces are controlled and deployed by the U.S. military, a significant portion of the budget for maintaining and modernizing the nuclear arsenal is allocated through the Department of Energy rather than the Pentagon.

Another large category of hidden spending involves veterans and military retirees. The costs of pensions, health care, disability benefits, survivor assistance, and other long-term obligations are primarily funded through the Department of Veterans Affairs and other federal accounts. These expenditures are direct consequences of maintaining military forces and fighting wars, yet they are typically excluded from military budget calculations.

Beyond veterans’ benefits and nuclear weapons, military-related spending can also be found within the budgets of the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, and several other agencies. Programs ranging from military aid to foreign governments to certain homeland security functions contribute to national military capacity but often fall outside official defence budget totals.

A major significant issue is debt financing. Since the wars launched after 11 September 2001, the United States has relied heavily on borrowing rather than taxation to finance military operations. For this reason, some refer to the post-2001 wars as ‘credit card wars’. While analysts disagree on how much of the national debt should be attributed to military activities, including these costs pushes 2025 military expenditures well above $2 trillion under some methodologies.

Despite differences in definitions and data sources used by the authors, all five methodologies arrive at a similar conclusion: the commonly cited military budget substantially underestimates what the United States actually spends on war, military forces, and related activities. This suggests that the issue is not a matter of partisan interpretation but rather the result of longstanding budget practices that disperse military costs across numerous federal agencies.

Understanding the true scale of military spending is essential for democratic accountability. Citizens cannot effectively debate national priorities if they are presented with incomplete information about how public funds are allocated. If major expenses associated with military activities are distributed across multiple departments, the public may struggle to compare military expenditures with spending on other priorities such as education, housing, infrastructure, health care, or climate resilience.

If the United States is already spending between $1.7 trillion and $2.3 trillion annually on military-related activities, proposals for additional increases should be evaluated against that broader fiscal reality rather than against the narrower Pentagon budget alone.

Unfortunately, there remains ambiguity about the full scale of military spending given the poor state of Pentagon accounting practices, including its inability to pass a financial audit. Members of the public and members of Congress need a full accounting of the military budget to analyse, discuss, and debate the proper size of military spending both on its own and in relation to other non-military funding priorities.

To provide accurate spending figures, Congress should reform its budgeting practices and provide a true total military budget that combines all forms of military and war spending in one place and one true total figure. Congress also should stop appropriating, and thus hiding, money for the military in other agencies’ budgets. Until Congress begins reporting accurate numbers, members of the media and other analysts should stop repeating incomplete congressional spending data and tell the public what the country is really spending on the military and war.

[Gisela Cernadas is an economist at the Centre of Economic Development Studies, National University of San Martin, Argentina, and a Member of the No Cold War collective. David Vine is a fellow at the Transition Security Project and former professor of anthropology at American University. John Bellamy Foster is an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. Courtesy: Globetrotter and No Cold War. Globetrotter is a project of Independent Media Institute, a nonprofit organization that educates the public through a diverse array of independent media projects and programs. No Cold War is an international platform committed to resisting the escalation of a new U.S.-driven cold or hot war against China or any other sovereign nation.]

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More Americans Are Hungry in the Face of Federal Cuts, Rising Grocery Prices

Kevin Hardy

The days of ground beef and chicken legs are long gone at the Ritenour Co-Care Food Pantry just outside of St. Louis. The nonprofit has swapped out those staple proteins for cheaper ground chicken and hot dogs as it faces higher food costs and surging demand.

“We have to adapt just like everybody else,” Executive Director Angela Gabel said about rising grocery prices.

Last year, Ritenour spent about $120,000 on food. The pantry budgeted $180,000 for this year, though Gabel said that may not be sufficient.

And the number of people looking for food has increased: The pantry signed up seven new families on a recent weekday morning and expected to add 15 by the end of the day. Gabel said more people are traveling further to visit multiple food pantries each month to stock their shelves.

Families are facing rising grocery prices at the same time that many of the most vulnerable are losing access to the nation’s largest food assistance program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. More than 4 million Americans lost SNAP benefits between February 2025 and this February, according to analyses of the most recent federal data. The numbers are expected to increase as states whittle the rolls further as required by the broad tax and spending law President Donald Trump signed last summer, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“I’m absolutely terrified,” Gabel said. “We will absolutely do our best, but I think we were meant to supplement SNAP or to help in emergency situations. I just don’t think we can replace the government.”

After One Big Beautiful Bill Act, 100,000 Tennesseans’ lose SNAP food aid

Since the fall, states and counties that administer SNAP have been notifying residents who rely on food stamps that they must meet new work requirements or lose their food assistance. The federal tax and spending law ended exemptions to work requirements for older adults, homeless people, veterans and some rural residents, among others. The changes will put more pressure on states, likely leading to further benefit cuts as they reevaluate eligibility and begin paying for more program costs. The new rules also will further stress the already-stretched charitable food system.

Gina Plata-Nino, SNAP director at the Food Research & Action Center, a nonprofit working to combat hunger, noted that children, older adults and people with disabilities are most reliant on the program. The left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated the average benefit per person this year would be $188 per month, or $6.17 per day.

“And a majority of them are making less than $1,100 a month,” she said. “So when you lose your SNAP benefit, it really does exacerbate your situation of having to choose between shelter, food, and other basic needs.”

Rising need for food

National data on hunger is limited since the Trump administration terminated the annual Household Food Security report last year. But other measures indicate that more people are missing regular meals.

In May, the federal Reserve Bank of New York found a “remarkable” increase in food insecurity across the country, with more people struggling than during the peak of the pandemic. Its national surveys last October and this February found more households dipped into savings accounts, relied on food donations or had trouble finding enough food to eat or had kids who missed meals.

Democrats and anti-hunger advocates have been urging Congress to rescind SNAP cuts for months. Current negotiations over reauthorizing the federal farm bill, which includes SNAP, have put the issue front and center in Congress. The House has passed a version of that legislation that won’t reverse the cuts.

Republicans have downplayed the effect of the changes and defended the SNAP cuts, arguing they are aimed at rooting out fraud and abuse.

U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a Wisconsin Republican, said he was raised in “abject, rural poverty,” by a single mother who relied on food stamps, subsidized lunches and government cheese.

But in late April, he urged support of the farm bill that cements cuts to the food stamp program.

“We do have to know that there is a tremendous amount of fraud that takes place in SNAP,” he said on the House floor, “and we want to make sure that every single dollar that is allocated to go to a hungry child or a veteran or one of our senior citizens goes to them.”

Last week, 23 state attorneys general wrote to Senate leaders who are now considering the farm bill, saying the Senate has an opportunity to “reverse course and reaffirm a bipartisan commitment that no American should go hungry because they cannot afford food.”

In Nebraska, where SNAP participation has dropped by about 11%, state lawmakers this year proposed legislation to ask the federal government for waivers from some of the new restrictions. Those bills, which did not advance, sought to protect benefits for veterans, former foster youth, homeless people and refugees.

But the problem demands a federal response, said Megan Hamann, the senior community organizer for food and nutrition access at Nebraska Appleseed, an advocacy nonprofit that works against poverty and discrimination.

“We’re going to be working with patchwork solutions in the meantime,” Hamann said. She described “a real reckoning as a result of loss of federal support and programming that has for a long time in our state and others offered stability and consistency that is no longer present.”

She said putting food on the table has become a widespread challenge for many in Nebraska as the price of housing, utilities and other everyday necessities squeezes household budgets.

“I talk to people on the daily who say, ‘I’m worried about the price of groceries, I’m worried about the price of gas, I feel like everything except for my wage is going up,’” she said.

Though generally focused on housing, the Omaha organization Restoring Dignity has launched a new food assistance program to help refugees who lost SNAP benefits late last year.

“A big chunk of what we do now revolves around food,” said founder and executive director Hannah Vlach.

Community donations allow Restoring Dignity to provide grocery store gift cards to those refugees. But the organization, which generally serves about 5,000 refugees per year, is helping only about 200 of the most vulnerable.

“Right now we’re just focused on the families who absolutely will be evicted and will be on the streets if they don’t get any assistance,” she said, “and I have no idea how those other families are surviving.”

Vlach emphasized that the federal government has specifically sanctioned the arrival of refugees her organization serves, many of whom served with U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

“This can’t become our new normal–this just can’t,” she said. “It’s unethical, it’s immoral.”

States triaging needs

West Virginian Raine Gibbons said she relies more on cheap staples such as pasta and pasta sauce, trimming the amount of meat and treats she buys.

She said her family of five recently saw a reduction in monthly SNAP benefits, which now provide just over $300 per month.

Gibbons supervises an in-home education program for parents at one of the state-run Family Support Centers, which provide parenting classes, baby supplies such as diapers and emergency food aid.

Aside from grappling with higher prices and reduced SNAP eligibility among clients, the West Virginians who rely on those 57 federally funded centers face an uncertain future because of unresolved state contracting issues.

“It’s really, really stressful,” Gibbons said. “It’s so hard to stay present and be the parent that you want to be when you’re worried about those daily struggles of just how to feed your family.”

Gibbons said SNAP is not a luxury, but an essential support for many families. “It’s really what’s keeping families like mine–who do work outside of the home, who do have a full-time job–afloat to be able to feed our families and our babies, and try to just get through this economy.”

California lawmakers are trying to help fill some of the federal void in their state. Democratic Assemblymember Alex Lee is pushing to add $100 million to a state program that doubles the purchasing power of SNAP when used for fresh fruits and vegetables. Separate pending legislation would petition the federal government for a waiver, allowing California to maintain an exemption from work requirements for former foster youth.

In California, nearly one-third of all families with young children struggled to put food on the table between July 2024 and January 2026, according to survey results from the Stanford University Center on Early Childhood.

“States are in a position of trying to triage what is the most important need for families, when really families have all of these needs that are considered pretty basic,” said Abigail Stewart-Kahn, managing director of the center. “It puts states in an untenable position to try to make decisions of which gaps to fill and for whom.”

Stewart-Kahn said many families face immediate decisions of which bills to pay and which needs to forgo, but that the parental stress and childhood distress will have long-term consequences for society.

“Every time we make a policy change that potentially increases stress in the lives of a child, we are deciding as a society that we’re okay with harming their healthy development, so that the next generation will struggle further with everything from educational attainment to mental health challenges,” she said.

[Kevin Hardy is a Stateline reporter. Courtesy: Minnesota Reformer and Stateline. Both are part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network, which is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.]

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More Than 770,000 Children Are No Longer Receiving SNAP Benefits After Trump Changes Federal Food Program

Nicole Santa Cruz

As a House committee debated President Donald Trump’s signature domestic policy bill last year, Republican backers repeatedly emphasized that its changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, wouldn’t affect vulnerable people.

SNAP reforms would “restore integrity” to the program and ensure it works for the “most vulnerable among us, including children,” said Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican and chair of the House Agriculture Committee.

Passing the bill would be a “historic accomplishment” that will ensure “those in need can continue to receive the assistance they need,” said Rep. John Rose, a Republican from Tennessee.

And Rep. Dusty Johnson, a South Dakota Republican, said the bill would focus resources on the “neediest” Americans. “If you are a pregnant woman, your benefits are unaffected. If you have young children at home, your benefits are unaffected by this bill. If you are disabled, your benefits are unaffected by this bill.”

But nearly a year after the measure was signed into law, the number of children receiving food assistance has plummeted by at least 776,000, according to a ProPublica analysis. At least 12 states break down program participation by age, and of the 1,670,011 people who are no longer receiving benefits in those states, 776,134, or 46%, were children.

Another analysis reached the same conclusion: Just last month, the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found there were 700,000 fewer children receiving food assistance.

Arizona has seen the nation’s largest percentage decline in SNAP participants; 205,223 children are no longer receiving the benefit since July 2025, a 55% drop. Louisiana had the second largest percent decline among children, 22%.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees SNAP, hasn’t detailed the impact on children aided by the program, but initial figures show that compared to February 2025, 4.3 million fewer people received SNAP nationwide in February 2026, leaving 37.8 million participants.

Although children weren’t the intended targets of the legislation’s changes, they’re increasingly “collateral damage,” said Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

If states are trying to comply with the law’s changes to SNAP, they’re likely not focusing on making the program accessible, Bergh said. Other experts said that people may be pushed off the program because of increased paperwork requirements to remain eligible.

States are required to impose work requirements for most adult recipients, while preparing for two major cost shifts. In October, states will begin covering 75% of the program’s administrative costs. States have been paying 50% of those costs.

In addition, states will have to pay a larger share of SNAP benefits starting in October 2027, based on their error rate. Error rates reflect overpayments or underpayments of SNAP benefits. While sometimes characterized as fraud, such errors are usually the fault of the state agency or the SNAP recipient, according to USDA, which describes them as “largely unintentional.”

If a state agency is facing staffing shortages and struggling to comply with new regulations, it will be harder for low-income families to access the benefits, Bergh said. “Families are falling through the cracks.”

In Massachusetts, for example, the share of SNAP applicants who called an assistance line and couldn’t reach a worker rose from 61% in November to nearly 81% in March, according to the Department of Transitional Assistance, which administers SNAP in the state. The state agency did not respond to a request for comment.

A USDA spokesperson did not address ProPublica’s questions about the number of children who have lost access to SNAP. “There is no shortage of resources for the most vulnerable among us, including children,” the spokesperson said.

The three members of the House Agriculture Committee who defended last year’s bill before its passage — Rose, Thompson and Johnson — did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about their statements now that many children no longer receive SNAP benefits.

Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, asked Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins about her recent comments that it was “good news” that millions of people no longer receive SNAP. If more than 700,000 children have been dropped in the 12 states that report those figures, “that number’s going to be into the millions” when other states are included, he said.

Rollins responded, “The 700,000 number of children is not correct,” contending that most people who were kicked off SNAP were “fraudulent.”

“That is not a nonpartisan group that gave you that number,” she said. (ProPublica independently verified the figures reported by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.)

McGovern said he has talked to people who have lost food assistance. “These are people who actually need and rely on this food assistance to provide basic nutrition for their families,” he said.

Pressure to lower error rates “creates a temptation for the states to bump off working families,” said Parke Wilde, a food economist at Tufts University. Working families may have more volatile incomes, making it harder for state agencies to assess benefits accurately.

“When they say we want to preserve SNAP for those with the greatest need, they’re sort of acknowledging that they want the scale of the SNAP program to be smaller,” he said.

Mariana Chilton, an expert in child hunger at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said a smaller program won’t save money in the long run. Research shows that children who receive SNAP benefits are healthier, have better academic outcomes, use hospitals less often and have better mental health as teenagers.

She called the situation a “public health crisis” in the making. “When children are not healthy, this affects children today and it affects them throughout their lifetimes,” she said, likening hunger during early childhood to a brain injury.

As Arizona’s SNAP participation drops, nonprofits are feeling the effects. St. Mary’s Food Bank, the largest in the state, has seen a 15% increase in need this year, which translates into 300,000 more visits from people in search of food, said Milt Liu, the chief executive officer.

“It’s important for everyone to realize that policies have implications for people on the edge, and we’re seeing that in our line every day,” he said.

On a recent morning, Ana Alvarez waited in a line of vehicles at a St. Mary’s food bank in Phoenix. Alvarez, a single mother of five who works at a restaurant, started coming to St. Mary’s after she lost her SNAP benefits in September.

She reapplied for SNAP with the Arizona Department of Economic Security in December, but the application is still pending. The department did not respond to questions about its backlog.

She clips coupons and has cut out trips to the zoo and restaurants with her children. The slow season at the restaurant where she works is about to hit. And as summer temperatures rise, Alvarez wonders how she will afford her electric bill, her rent and her car payment.

At least once a week she contacts the agency about her application. The last time she called, a worker told her what others have in the past: She will have to keep waiting.

[Courtesy: ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit American newsroom devoted to investigative journalism in the public interest. Its reporting exposes abuses of power, corruption and betrayals of public trust, often pursuing investigations until they produce accountability or reform.]

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Nearly Half of Adults Struggled to Afford Healthcare Last Year, Survey Finds

Nada Hassanein

Forty-six percent of U.S. adults–regardless of insurance type–reported struggling to afford healthcare last year, according to a report released Wednesday by the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research think tank.

The report analyzed findings from a December 2025 survey of 10,000 working-age adults across the nation. Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the research comes at a time of U.S. cost-of-living concerns and economic woes.

Uninsured adults were most likely–60%–to report at least one affordability problem.

Researchers defined affordability challenges as: trouble paying family medical bills in the past year, a family member not getting healthcare they needed due to costs, or the family having medical debt at the time of the survey.

Almost 40% of adults with private employer coverage, roughly 54% of those with Marketplace or plans, and 57% of adults with Medicaid reported having problems affording medical care.

More than a third–about 35%–of all surveyed adults said a family member had unmet healthcare needs because of costs.

The survey also found disparities in care affordability.

Adults with disabilities, for example, were more likely to have trouble affording healthcare for their families at almost 69% of those surveyed, compared with 40% of adults without disabilities. And the majority of Black and Hispanic adults reported struggling to afford care, compared with about 42% of white adults and 28% of Asian adults.

Health conditions also coincided with affordability troubles: More than 7 in 10 people who suffered strokes reported problems affording care for their families, followed by 70% of those with COPD, chronic bronchitis or emphysema, and about 64% of those with cancer and heart disease.

Half of adults living in the South–a region home to several states that haven’t expanded Medicaid eligibility–and those in rural areas of the country also reported affordability challenges, in contrast with roughly 45% of adults in urban areas.

Survey results also showed about 1 in 5 adults with private health insurance coverage reported large increases in insurance premiums–but adults with individual Marketplace plans were nearly twice as likely to report large premium increases as those with employer coverage.

According to health policy research organization KFF, the average Marketplace deductible surged by about $1,000 per person this year, as more enrollees shift to higher-deductible plans after enhanced subsidies expired.

[Nada Hassanein is a Stateline reporter. Courtesy: Minnesota Reformer and Stateline. Both are part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network, which is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.]

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More Than 5 Million People Have Lost Health Coverage Under Trump-GOP Law

Stephen Prager

Not even a year after President Donald Trump signed the largest healthcare cuts in US history into law, around five million Americans have lost insurance coverage, according to a report out Monday from Protect Our Care, which predicted that the crisis was “only going to get worse.”

The massive budget and tax legislation passed by Republicans last July, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, slashed nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) over the next decade while introducing tax breaks that are expected to hand an additional $1 trillion to the richest 1% of Americans.

“Five million and counting. That’s the human toll of the spiraling Republican healthcare affordability crisis,” said Protect Our Care president Brad Woodhouse. “Just one year after Trump and congressional Republicans made the largest cuts to healthcare in history to fund tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations on Wall Street, millions have lost the care they depended on to stay alive and healthy.”

Citing the most recent data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and state agencies, the report found that the number of Americans enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP had fallen to just 76.9 million, down from 80.8 million a year before—a decline of more than 3.8 million people.

Another 1.2 million are also estimated to have lost coverage due to the massive spike in premiums after Republicans voted not to renew tax credits for consumers under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that lowered costs for Americans who purchased coverage through ACA marketplaces.

During open enrollment in 2025, 24.3 million Americans selected insurance plans through the ACA. This year, as the average premium was projected to more than double on average, the number of Americans enrolled through the ACA fell to just 23.1 million—a drop of nearly 1.2 million.

The millions of other families still enrolled in insurance through the ACA exchanges saw an average increase of $780, and according to KFF, it’s only been that low because many families have opted to switch to cheaper, less comprehensive plans.

The loss of insurance coverage “is only a small piece of the puzzle,” Woodhouse said.

“Millions more are making impossible choices every day to keep their coverage, including skipping rent or cutting back on groceries so they can see a doctor,” he said. “Their pain and suffering are incalculable.”

The report said the coverage losses over the first year are “just the beginning” and that “millions more will lose coverage once deeper cuts go into effect.”

The full slate of changes to Medicaid from the GOP bill has not yet been enacted. Next year, many adult recipients will be required to submit proof that they are doing at least 80 hours of work or other qualifying activity each month in order to maintain benefits, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated could increase the uninsured population by 5.3 million by 2034.

Another paperwork hurdle, the requirement that certain Medicaid expansion enrollees prove their eligibility every six months, is expected to result in another 700,000 people becoming uninsured by 2034.

In total, CBO analyses estimate that over the next decade, roughly 15 million Americans would lose their insurance coverage as a result of the legislation.

“These are our neighbors, our friends, our loved ones. These are small business owners and farmers. These are seniors. Veterans. Moms,” Woodhouse said. “These are millions of working people now scrambling to find insulin pumps, taking thousands out of retirement just to see a doctor for that cough that’s not getting better, or, worse, not getting care at all.”

With healthcare costs now a top concern among voters—66% of whom said they were worried about affording it, according to a KFF poll in January—cuts to healthcare spending appear to be a glaring liability for Republicans entering the midterm elections.

Another KFF poll from April found that 37% of voters said they trusted Democrats to address healthcare costs, while just 26% said they trusted Republicans. Meanwhile, 67% of voters said they disapproved of the Trump administration’s handling of healthcare costs.

“Every single day, the affordability crisis mounts, and more Americans will find themselves joining the five million struggling to keep up with skyrocketing healthcare costs,” Woodhouse said. “The American people won’t forget this betrayal in November.”

Democrats have seized on Monday’s report as part of their election pitch, including Rep. Greg Landsman, who faces a competitive reelection fight in Ohio’s 1st Congressional District.

He wrote on social media Tuesday that Republicans “cut healthcare by nearly a trillion to pay for tax cuts for the super wealthy… five million people no longer have healthcare.”

“The healthcare crisis in America is dominating the lives of millions, and will soon dominate all of our lives,” he said. “We need a new Congress to restore people’s healthcare and to end this crisis. There is no other way.”

[Stephen Prager is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Courtesy: Common Dreams, a US non-profit news portal.]