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Texas plan to redraw maps could protect GOP House majority; NYers protest federal budget bill's cuts, policy changes; Ohio Freedom Schools mobilize youth to speak out for public education; MSU studies fire-resistant structures, amid house fires uptick.

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Emil Bove's nomination advances in the Senate. The DOJ requests state voter data. And ICE plans to expand Colorado detention facilities.

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America's 'news deserts' could get worse with massive funding cuts to public broadcasting, federal cuts to AmeriCorps will eliminate volunteers in rural Oregon, and a 140-year-old South Dakota church thrives by welcoming all.

IN residents watch direction of Trump spending bill amid state budget cuts

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Friday, June 13, 2025   

As Congress reviews budget slashes to health care in President Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," a new evaluation from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects 16 million Americans, including 1.8 million Medicaid and Healthy Indiana Plan recipients, would go without health insurance.

If the bill passes as is, said Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, health providers would see a sharp increase in what is known as uncompensated care, when people without coverage get sick but are unable to pay.

"And it means hospitals and doctors no longer receive that income stream from Medicaid payments," he said. "And lots of them are going to be forced out of business, and there's going to be closures of hospitals, especially in rural counties."

Republicans question the Congressional Budget Office projections, believing that cutting $715 billion from Medicaid eliminates fraud. They want to add specific work mandates for healthy working-age adults. The GOP bill aims to fund Trump administration priorities, including more immigration raids and border wall construction, and extending tax cuts passed in 2017.

According to the research site KFF, nearly 569,000 Hoosiers are enrolled through the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion.

Bivens said he fears that if the bill becomes law, he sees the measure as a transfer of income from vulnerable families to already wealthy Americans. He noted that the average cuts to Medicaid, which would take effect after the 2026 midterm elections, would be more than $70 billion per year.

"And then if you look at the tax cuts that will be received by just people making over $1 million per year, those are $70 billion as well," he said. "We're going to take $70 billion away from poor families on Medicaid, and we're going to give it to families who are making more than $1 million per year."

Six Nobel laureate economists have signed an open letter opposing cuts to safety-net programs in the budget reconciliation bill, warning the measure would add $5 trillion to the national debt.


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