WASHINGTON, June 3 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, issued the following statement in response to new calculations from Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania finding that more than 51,000 additional Americans will die each year if Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” is signed into law.
“Let’s be clear. The Republican reconciliation bill which makes massive cuts to Medicaid in order to pay for huge tax breaks for billionaires is not just bad public policy. It is not just immoral. It is a death sentence for struggling Americans,” Sanders said. “If this bill becomes law, more than 51,000 Americans will die unnecessarily each and every year. That’s not Bernie Sanders talking. That is precisely what experts at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania have found. In other words, when you throw 13.7 million Americans off the health care they have as the CBO has estimated, when you increase the cost of prescription drugs for low-income seniors, and when you make nursing homes throughout America less safe, not only will some of the most vulnerable people throughout our country suffer, but tens of thousands will die. We cannot allow that to happen.”
Sanders was responding to projections on the mortality implications of the Republican reconciliation bill he received in a letter today from the Yale School of Public Health and the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. The letter estimates that if the Republican reconciliation bill is signed into law, over 51,000 people will die annually.
The estimate from Yale and the University of Pennsylvania is based on the annual impact of four policies included in the Republican reconciliation bill:
- 11,300 more Americans will die as a result of working people losing health coverage from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA);
- 18,200 more Americans will die as a result of low-income seniors losing subsidies that reduce their prescription drug costs;
- 13,000 more Americans will die as a result of the elimination of safe staffing requirements in nursing homes; and
- 8,811 more Americans will die as a result of the failure to extend tax credits for ACA coverage.
Sanders concluded: “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. As the Ranking Member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, I will be doing everything that I can to see that this disastrous bill is defeated.”
Read the letter from Yale and the University of Pennsylvania here.
