
Talk to most experts, and it’s clear that the Trump Administration’s massive, much-hyped budget proposal — the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” currently working its way through Congress — confirms that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
And if it becomes law, they say, the future won’t look good for Black Americans.
The bill takes a chainsaw to government programs that members of the Black community disproportionately depend on for healthcare. It calls for hollowing out Medicaid, as well as a legislative sleight of hand that all but repeals the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Experts say those two provisions alone could cause 14 million people, a sizable percentage of whom are Black, to lose access to healthcare insurance.
But the bill also calls for deep cuts to public health agencies, as well as slashing the budget for the anti-poverty program known as food stamps and ending government reimbursements to nonprofits that provide Black women with free or reduced-cost reproductive healthcare.
These cuts, experts say, will disproportionately hurt Black Americans and will push the poor deeper into poverty, while the wealthy will benefit.
Upward Wealth Redistribution
Six Nobel prize-winning economists said as much Monday in an open letter published on the Economic Policy Institute website.
“The most acute and immediate damage stemming from this bill would be felt by the millions of American families losing key safety net protections like Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits,” they wrote. “The Medicaid cuts constitute a sad step backward in the nation’s commitment to providing access to health care for all.”
The combination of cuts to key safety net programs and tax cuts for the wealthy means the bill “constitutes an extremely large upward redistribution of income,” they wrote. “Given how much this bill adds to the U.S. debt, it is shocking that it still imposes absolute losses on the bottom 40% of U.S households.”
As the centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, the bill has drawn fire from the left and the right for its potential to harm lower-income Americans. Still, it has already been passed by the House of Representatives. The Senate is currently considering it, and Trump wants it on his desk by July 4.
“The most acute and immediate damage stemming from this bill would be felt by the millions of American families losing key safety net protections like Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.”
open letter from Six Nobel prize-winning economists
The bill cuts $700 billion from the Department of Health and Human Services — which controls the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among others — and calls for $300 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a.k.a. SNAP, which helps the food insecure buy groceries. Both proposals, experts say, will worsen healthcare in low-income Black communities.
But the biggest point of contention is what the bill could do to Medicaid, the venerable health insurance plan.
Healthcare on the Chopping Block
Budget analysts estimate cuts to Medicaid, which provides health insurance coverage for a disproportionate number of low-income Black households, will force some 10 million people to go without coverage because of the cuts.
Besides limiting access to primary healthcare, the bill also could be disastrous for Black women’s reproductive health.
Medicaid provides health insurance coverage for low-income Americans, pays out-of-pocket health costs for low-income retirees and provides nursing home and in-home care services for the elderly. But it also pays for more than 40% of the births in the United States — including more than half of all births in Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.
Then there’s the Medicaid-funded reimbursements to organizations like Planned Parenthood for America, which provides free or low-cost reproductive healthcare. One out of every three Black women has relied on Planned Parenthood for services like breast cancer and cervical cancer screening, contraceptives, and testing for sexually transmitted infections.
Black Women at Risk
Dr. Serina Floyd, chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, D.C., says the budget cuts put women’s health at risk.
Studies show Black women are more likely to be diagnosed with cervical cancer at a later stage and face a lower five-year survival rate. Roughly 4,320 American women will die from cervical cancer this year, and the mortality rate for Black women is nearly 65% higher than for white women.
“Patients come in for their pap smear screening and have had abnormalities with that testing and require follow-up testing, and in some cases require treatment to prevent the advancement to cervical cancer — that can be fairly costly,” Floyd says.
For Medicaid insurance patients, she says, having access to that care is “hugely significant. “Losing access to coverage for that care is devastating,” she says.