In his first 100 days in office, Donald Trump has been on a rampage against our nation’s health care system. From terminating vital health and science agencies and firing tens of thousands of workers, moving to cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid, and installing anti-vaccine zealot RFK Jr. as Secretary of HHS, Trump and Republicans have already done irreparable damage to the American health care system. Republicans are endangering the lives of millions of Americans by eroding our nation’s health care, and they have no plans on stopping.
“Trump and his allies in Congress are playing political games with people’s lives,” said Protect Our Care Chair Leslie Dach. “Trump’s schemes threaten the health and well-being of every single person in this country. He has ripped away Americans’ access to lifesaving health care, compromised the safety of our food and water, and made it more dangerous to have a child and start a family. And it’s only getting worse as Republicans seek to decimate Medicaid to pay for tax cuts for wealthy people and big corporations. If Trump continues down this road, there won’t be a community in this nation that isn’t impacted.”
Right now, Republicans’ top priority is making the largest Medicaid cuts in history to pay for tax breaks for the wealthiest people and big corporations. Gutting Medicaid threatens to rip health care away from more than 70 million Americans, including children, seniors in nursing homes, veterans, people fighting cancer, and working families. Read more about Trump’s health care sabotage here.
Increasing Costs for Working Americans
- Proposed hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid, which could leave millions of Americans without coverage, kill over 30,000 people annually, and raise health care costs across the board.
- Cut nearly 90 percent of ACA Navigator funding that currently helps people enroll in affordable health coverage.
- Announced a rule that shortens the Affordable Care Act open enrollment period by one month and ends the ability for low-income families to sign up monthly instead of waiting for the enrollment period in the fall; this will lead to 2 million Americans losing coverage.
- Released an executive order aimed to boost drug company profits, weaken Medicare price negotiation, and raise prescription drug costs for Americans.
- Passed a continuing resolution that paves the way for Republicans to rip away cost-saving tax credits for middle-class families, jeopardizing the health and financial stability of millions of people.
- Delayed implementation of a Biden administration rule that barred medical debt from showing on credit reports.
- Dropped the Biden-era proposal for drugs used to assist in weight-loss to be covered by health insurance.
- Announced a significant increase in payments for Medicare Advantage plans, raising costs for seniors and nearly doubling the projected costs that the Biden administration had previously released.
- Proposed a new rule which would prevent gender-affirming care from being covered under ACA marketplace plans.
- Proposed stripping DACA recipients of health care coverage guaranteed under the ACA.
Slashing Funding for Health Care
- Cancelled over $12 billion in health care grants, putting into question states’ abilities to treat mental health disorders and infectious disease outbreaks.
- Cut NIH grants, capping the payout rate at 15 percent. This will hinder life-saving research being done at universities across the country.
- Defied court orders to stop freezing or terminating research grants.
- Defunded studies that aimed to explain vaccine hesitancy and explore how to increase vaccination rates.
- Terminated 145 grants totaling nearly half a billion dollars on the research of HIV prevention and care.
- Froze over $27.5 million in funding for family planning grants across the country. Since 2023 in Tennessee alone where $8 million was frozen, those funds have been used to serve over 30,000 families.
- Signed an executive order ending all funding for any kind of gender-affirming care for people 19 and under by threatening the revocation of all Medicaid and Medicare funding; as well the order further eroded patient privacy protections for all Americans.
Gutting Health Departments
- Fired several thousand employees across HHS, including those who worked on infectious diseases, and pressured 80,000 HHS employees to leave the agency.
- Shut down two independent food safety committees that help keep Americans safe from outbreaks of bacteria, such as listeria.
- Closed vaccination sites across the country amidst the largest measles outbreak of this century.
- Canceled the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee which was set to discuss the strains of influenza to include in the next flu shot.
- Shut down 30 percent of all Indian Health Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs offices, ripping away health care access from people already systemically underserved when it comes to health care.
- Indefinitely postponed the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting. The ACIP “offers guidance on vaccine approvals and influences which shots insurers cover” and had been scheduled to discuss vaccines for COVID-19, meningococcal virus, influenza, RSV, HPV, and Mpox.
- Released plans outlining proposals to fire 10,000 HHS employees who have been responding to infectious disease outbreaks, approving new life-saving drugs, administering critical programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and more
- Ended the HHS Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Long COVID.
- Fired around 1,900 probationary workers from the Department of Health and Human Services, with the administration hinting they could fire as many as 5,200.
- Fired the FDA’s head of medical device safety, Ross Segan, along with other employees.
- Shut down CMS and HHS’s Minority Health Offices; going forward this means little to no research will be done on increasing access and affordability to marginalized populations such as racial and ethnic minorities and rural Americans.
- Disbanded a panel researching ways to further health equity for those on Medicaid and Medicare.
- Ordered HHS to remove the public comment portion of the rule-making process, ending transparency and removing feedback from the people who the policies would affect.
Putting Conspiracy Theorists and Grifters in Charge of Your Health Care
- Confirmed vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead HHS.
- Put David Geier, an anti-vax, quack scientist, and fake doctor, in charge of the “study” into connections between vaccinations and autism.
- Selected the GOP’s general counsel, Thomas March Bell, as HHS Inspector General. Bell is best known for his radical anti-abortion views and his support for defunding family planning health agencies.
- Confirmed Jay Bhattacharya, a COVID-19 skeptic who has called for dismantling the National Institute of Health, as National Institutes of Health Director, and Marty Makary, who supports RFK Jr.’s bogus science claims and has plans to overhaul the FDA, as Food and Drug Administration Commissioner.
- Confirmed celebrity doctor and grifter Mehmet Oz to be the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
What They’re Planning Next
Republicans are continuing to build upon the momentum of Trump’s first 100 days in office, charging forward with their plan to slash $880 billion from Medicaid in order to pay for tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, such a drastic reduction in funding will lead to the largest cuts in Medicaid history and rip health care away from millions of seniors in nursing homes, children, veterans, working families, and more.
While Republicans work to give more tax breaks to their billionaire donors, they are also working to hike health care premiums on middle-class families. The over 20 million Americans with marketplace coverage, currently saving an average of $800 per person per month on premiums, cannot afford to have Republicans succeed in their plans to hike premiums. Premiums will nearly double for the average family, and 5 million people will lose their health care altogether. Every single community across the country will feel the effects of these cuts. Nevertheless, the Republican plan is clear: slash Medicaid and raise premium costs for working Americans.