Poll: Most Recognize Trump’s Budget Bill Will Lead to Millions Losing Insurance

New polling demonstrates that a majority of Americans are concerned about the cuts to Medicaid and other social health programs in President Donald Trump’s reconciliation bill, with most believing that the cuts will likely increase their family’s health costs.

The KFF poll, published last week, comes shortly after a new analysis by health experts shows that millions will lose their health insurance should the legislative package — which Trump has dubbed a “big, beautiful bill” — become law.

According to the survey, 54 percent of Americans say they are worried that federal spending cuts on Medicaid would negatively impact their family’s ability to pay for or obtain health care. A higher proportion of respondents, 72 percent, said they were worried that the proposed spending cuts would lead to more adults and children in the U.S. becoming uninsured, with only 28 percent saying they didn’t have those concerns.

Across party lines, Democrats were more likely to express worries about the bill’s impact on Americans’ access to health care, with 94 percent saying they worried that the spending cuts would lead to more in the country becoming uninsured and only 44 percent of Republicans expressing the same view. However, within those crosstabs of the poll, even 4 in 10 self-identified “MAGA” Republicans expressed those concerns, signaling that a significant segment of Trump’s base is concerned about the cuts to Medicaid.

The administration has continuously attempted to alleviate these fears through misleading press releases and public statements. But in a letter sent to a group of senators earlier this month analyzing the impacts of the GOP’s reconciliation bill, health experts from Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania estimated that the legislation would lead to an additional 51,000 deaths in the U.S. each year for the next decade.

That analysis noted that 10.9 million people would lose their health insurance due to the bill’s cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act Marketplace. The experts also found that an additional 5.1 million people would lose their insurance status due to the bill failing to extend tax credits for ACA Marketplace plans and the Department of Health and Human Services’s (HHS) proposed rules to limit the program’s enrollment periods, bringing the total of people who could lose their health care due to the bill and other actions by the administration up to 16 million.

Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who was among the lawmakers who had requested the independent analysis, decried the administration for pushing a bill that would lead to millions losing their health coverage.

“In the wealthiest country in the world, we should be guaranteeing health care to all as a human right, not taking health care away from millions of seniors and working families to pay for tax breaks for billionaires,” Sanders said in a statement.