Public health expert: Trump's "big, beautiful bill" will cause misery and death

Public health expert: Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” will cause misery and death
51,000 deaths per year is just the starting point

By Chauncey DeVega
Senior Writer
Published July 1, 2025 6:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) A government’s budget is about much more than numbers: It’s a moral document that reflects a nation’s values. Chief among those should be providing for the most vulnerable. This includes guaranteeing health care for Americans; shoring up Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act; providing food assistance to needy people, including the elderly and children; funding science and medical research; and requiring the very richest to pay their share of taxes.

Within this framework, it’s clear that Donald Trump and the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act is a moral failure in the making, where greed, cruelty and sociopathy are masquerading as responsible public policy. In a recent interview with “Democracy Now!,” Rev. William Barber correctly described it as the “Big, Ugly, Destructive, Deadly Bill.”

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In early June, Dr. Alison Galvani, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis at the Yale School of Public Health, joined with other public health and policy experts at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania in signing an open letter to Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, both of whom serve on the Senate Finance Committee. The group, in warning about the bill’s potential impacts, predicted the unnecessary deaths of at least 51,000 people each year in the United States.

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America’s democracy crisis is not just one discrete thing. It overlaps with most, if not all, areas of society and life. What do we know empirically about the impact of authoritarianism on public health and well-being?

Authoritarian regimes often suppress scientific inquiry, censor data and discredit experts, which is devastating for public health. Accurate data and open scientific discourse are fundamental for identifying health threats, developing effective interventions and responding to crises (e.g., pandemics). Politicizing science leads to a misinformed public, hindering effective health behaviors.

Resources may be diverted away from essential public services, including health care, toward security apparatuses or to benefit favored elites. Corruption can siphon funds meant for health infrastructure, drug procurement or service delivery. .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/07/01/public-health-expert-trumps-big-beautiful-bill-will-cause-misery-and-death/