More Americans Are Losing Health Insurance—And Everyone Will Pay

“There’s a ripple effect that hits the uninsured and newly uninsured and underinsured particularly hard,” says Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA, a national consumer health advocacy group. “But it ripples through families and communities and the health system we all rely on.” 

Some hospitals are already closing. Select Specialty Hospital—Tucson East recently announced its imminent closure, though a spokesperson did not confirm it was because of H.R. 1. Others are already making tough choices about what services to continue. One Las Vegas hospital said in August that because of increased demand for its emergency room services, it was closing its maternity and NICU services by the end of September. 

Safety net hospitals are most in danger of seeing their finances erode quickly. That’s because they are, by definition, non-profit hospitals that provide care to people regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay. America’s Essential Hospitals, an association for safety net hospitals, said in an interview that among its 400 members, three-quarters of the patients they serve are uninsured or on Medicare or Medicaid. Already, these hospitals are losing money every year, says Jennifer DeCubellis, president and CEO of America’s Essential Hospitals. This is likely to get worse as more people delay care and then end up in emergency rooms, where their care is going to be more expensive, she says. “We’re going to see longer wait times in emergency departments,” she says, “and what we’ve already started seeing, even before the One Big Beautiful Bill, is the loss of services in local communities.”