GOP’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Becomes Law and New York Will Pay the Price
David R. Jones, La Nueva Mayoria / The New Majority
It's quite astonishing to think that we have reached a point in this extremely charged and partisan political environment where members of Congress would decline to protect their own constituents in unashamed deference to party politics.
Yet, that's exactly where we are, and that's exactly what happened in New York.
With the narrowest possible margin, Republicans in Congress have succeeded in pushing through their so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” a sweeping measure that slashes Medicaid, guts the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and upends the health care safety net for millions. Every one of New York's seven Republican House members had the opportunity to stop it. None did.
In fact, they voted in lockstep to dismantle protections for seniors, low-income families, children, and people with disabilities in their own congressional districts.
Now that the bill has been signed into law, the damage is no longer theoretical. It's imminent, and it's immense.
New York is squarely in the crosshairs. More than 1.5 million New Yorkers are expected to lose health coverage. A $13.5 billion hole will blow open in the state budget. Hospital funding will be slashed by $3 billion, putting 70 percent of the state's hospitals at risk of closing. Premiums on the marketplace are projected to emerge by 38 percent — an increase of about $2,700 a year for a couple. These are not scare tactics; These are estimates backed by research from institutions like the University of Pennsylvania, which also predicts the law will lead to more than 42,000 preventable deaths annually nationwide.
The Essential Plan , New York's Basic Health Plan, will be hit especially hard. This program includes comprehensive benefits with no monthly premium or deductible for 1.6 million New Yorkers with incomes below 250 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. Under the new law, around 500,000 of the lowest-income legal immigrants will be forced out of the Essential Plan and into a costly, state-funded Medicaid program, costing New York $2.7 billion annually. An additional 225,000 legally present individuals with slightly higher incomes will be left with no coverage at all.
And the carnage doesn't stop at health care. The law also undermines SNAP (food stamps), putting over three million New Yorkers at risk of losing basic food assistance and leaving the state with yet another $2.1 billion budget hole. This is nothing short of a coordinated assault on the federal-state partnership that undergirds our safety net led by our own congressional delegation.
New York Republicans may claim they were blindsided by the final provisions of the bill. After all, five of them wrote a letter to the US Senate to protest the disproportionate harm the law would impose on New York. But those words ring hollow now. They had their chance to stop this. They failed to act.
New Yorkers will now bear the consequences of a law designed not to serve, but to punish. The impact will ripple through hospitals, families, schools, and communities for years to come.
This is no longer a warning. It's reality.