US Sen. Ruben Gallego announced Thursday plans to meet with Arizona healthcare experts to evaluate what impact Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid would have across the state.
The healthcare forum will take place in Phoenix this Saturday with participants from six speakers representing different sectors of the healthcare community, including the American Cancer Society, Arizona Chamber of Commerce, and the Arizona Alliance for Community Health Centers. The group plans to discuss who the Medicaid cuts would hit the hardest, the economic impact, and what it would mean for public health if over 25% of Arizona’s population were to lose their health insurance.
“This week, congressional Republicans passed a budget resolution that would have the most drastic cuts to Medicaid in US history,” said Gallego. “That means elderly Arizonans will be kicked out of nursing homes and rural health care will be decimated. The stakes couldn’t be higher, and we’re going to hear directly from community health leaders on what these cuts will need for our state.”
The cuts are part of President Donald Trump’s federal budget proposal—passed by the US House of Representatives—that would leave over 2 million Arizonans without health insurance in order to extend tax cuts for corporations and billionaires.
“If you were to come in here and then take the president’s requests… you add it all up, by 2035, you have over $74 trillion in debt,” said US Rep. David Schweikert, who voted in favor of Trump’s proposal despite his objections. “Every single tax in America needs to be doubled just to maintain baseline services.”
The proposed tax breaks for the rich are so vast that even cutting nearly $1 trillion in public service funding would not be enough to offset what billionaires and major corporations would save: in total, these cuts would increase the federal budget deficit by $4.6 trillion.
The impact to the local economy would be similarly devastating. In addition to laying the groundwork for a public health crisis, analysts predict that the loss of health insurance at that scale would cripple the healthcare industry, resulting in clinic closures, higher costs, and longer wait times.
“This would leave hundreds of thousands of Arizonans without access to life-saving healthcare services,” Gallego said. “Instead of protecting the health of Americans, Republicans chose to give Elon Musk and his billionaire buddies massive tax cuts.”
