President Trump rode to reelection last fall on voter concerns about prices. But as his administration pares back federal rules and programs designed to protect patients from the high cost of health care, Trump risks pushing more Americans into debt, further straining family budgets already stressed by medical bills.
Millions of people are expected to lose health insurance in the coming years as a result of the tax cut legislation Trump signed this month, leaving them with fewer protections from large bills if they get sick or suffer an accident.
Changes large and small
At the same time, significant increases in health plan premiums on state insurance marketplaces next year will likely push more Americans to either drop coverage or switch to higher-deductible plans that will require them to pay more out of pocket before their insurance kicks in.
Smaller changes to federal rules are poised to bump up patients' bills as well. New federal guidelines for COVID-19 vaccines, for example, will allow health insurers to stop covering the shots for millions, so if patients want the protection, some may have to pay out of pocket.
The new tax cut legislation will also raise the cost of certain doctor visits, requiring copays of up to $35 for some Medicaid enrollees.
And for those who do end up in debt, there will be fewer protections. This month, the Trump administration secured permission from a federal court to roll back regulations that would have removed medical debt from consumer credit reports.
That puts Americans who cannot pay their medical bills at risk of lower credit scores, hindering their ability to get a loan or forcing them to pay higher interest rates.
"For tens of millions of Americans, balancing the budget is like walking a tightrope," said Chi Chi Wu, a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. "The Trump administration is just throwing them off."
White House spokesperson Kush Desai did not respond to questions about how the administration's health care policies will affect Americans' medical bills.
Republicans downplay Medicaid cuts
The president and his Republican congressional allies have brushed off the health care cuts, including hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid retrenchment in the mammoth tax law. "You won't even notice it," Trump said at the White House after signing the bill on July 4. "Just waste, fraud and abuse."
But consumer and patient advocates around the U.S. warn that the erosion of federal health care protections since Trump took office in January threatens to significantly undermine Americans' financial security.
"These changes will hit our communities hard," said Arika Sánchez, who oversees health care policy at the nonprofit New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty.
Sánchez predicted that many more people the center works with will end up with medical debt. "When families get stuck with medical debt, it hurts their credit scores, makes it harder to get a car, a home or even a job," she said. "Medical debt wrecks people's lives."
For Americans with serious illnesses such as cancer, weakened federal protections from medical debt pose yet one more risk, said Elizabeth Darnall, senior director of federal advocacy at the American Cancer Society's Cancer Action Network. "People will not seek out the treatment they need," she said.
Affordability is a big concern
Trump promised a rosier future while campaigning last year, pledging to "make America affordable again" and "expand access to new Affordable Healthcare."
Polls indicate voters were looking for relief.
About 6 in 10 adults — across the political spectrum — say they are worried about being able to afford health care, according to one recent survey, outpacing concerns about the cost of food or housing. And medical debt remains a widespread problem: As many as 100 million adults in the U.S. are burdened by some kind of health care debt.
Despite this, key tools that have helped prevent even more Americans from sinking into debt are now on the chopping block.
Medicaid and other government health insurance programs, in particular, have proved to be a powerful economic backstop for low-income patients and their families, said Kyle Caswell, an economist at the Urban Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.
Caswell and other researchers found, for example, that Medicaid expansion made possible by the 2010 Affordable Care Act led to measurable declines in medical debt and improvements in consumers' credit scores in states that implemented the expansion.
"We've seen that these programs have a meaningful impact on people's financial well-being," Caswell said.
Millions more uninsured after Medicaid cuts
Trump's tax law — which will slash more than $1 trillion in federal health spending over the next decade, mostly through Medicaid cuts — is expected to leave 10 million more people without health coverage by 2034, according to the latest estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The tax cuts, which primarily benefit wealthy Americans, will add $3.4 trillion to U.S. deficits over a decade, the office calculated.
The number of uninsured people could spike further if Trump and his congressional allies don't renew additional federal subsidies for low- and moderate-income Americans who buy health coverage on state insurance marketplaces.
This aid — enacted under then-President Joe Biden — lowers insurance premiums and reduces medical bills that enrollees face when they go to the doctor or the hospital. But unless congressional Republicans choose to extend the help, those subsidies will expire later this year, leaving many with bigger bills.
Federal debt regulations developed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the Biden administration would have protected these people and others if they couldn't pay their medical bills.
The agency issued rules in January that would have removed medical debts from consumer credit reports. That would have helped an estimated 15 million people.
But the Trump administration chose not to defend the new regulations when they were challenged in court by debt collectors and the credit bureaus, which argued that the federal agency had exceeded its authority in issuing the rules. A federal judge in Texas appointed by Trump ruled that the regulation should be scrapped.
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