In July 2025, the Trump administration signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, resulting in the largest healthcare cuts in history by increasing obstacles to Medicaid participation, deterring Medicaid expansion in some states and terminating eligibility for legal immigrants. Congress also let healthcare tax credits expire in January 2026, raising insurance costs by $1,000 a year for 20 million Americans, including 6.5 million Latinos. Together, these decisions cut $1 trillion in federal support for Medicaid and private insurance. A new report from the Latino civil rights advocacy group UnidosUS found 14 million Americans, including 4 million Latinos, are expected to lose healthcare coverage over the next 10 years as a direct result of federal policy changes.
“Unlike major coverage losses of the past, which resulted from recession-driven layoffs and terminations of employer-based coverage, today’s far larger coverage losses are entirely self-inflicted, resulting from policy choices made by Congress and the administration,” said Stan Dorn, director of the Health Policy Project at UnidosUS, in a press release. “At a time when families across the country are struggling with rising costs, lawmakers are choosing to worsen healthcare affordability and accessibility, threatening to erase 14 years of hard-won gains under the Affordable Care Act. Lawmakers must reverse course now to protect American healthcare.”
The UnidosUS report used data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the American Community Survey, the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey and KFF’s Current Population Survey to conduct analyses on rates and demographics of uninsured people over time.
Following the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, almost 10 million Latinos gained healthcare coverage, but healthcare gaps persist. By late 2024, 36% of Latinos had no regular healthcare provider, 55% of Latinos reported difficulty affording healthcare costs and 43% of Latinos postponed or skipped essential healthcare because of cost, compared with only 16%, 40% and 43% of non-Hispanic whites, respectively.
Latinos have the highest projections for loss of healthcare coverage. By state, Latinos make up 58% of those expected to be newly uninsured in Florida, 56% in New Mexico, 53% in California, 48% in Texas and 45% in Arizona. Based on current enrollment patterns, 57% of people expected to lose coverage in the next 10 years are people of color, including 4.3 million Latinos, 2.4 million Black people, nearly 1 million Asian Americans and more than 100,000 Native Americans.
In the report, UnidosUS calls for meaningful improvements to healthcare infrastructure, including more accessible healthcare, paperless health coverage, improved customer service and immediate ACA coverage in states that haven’t expanded Medicaid.
“Federal policymakers should repeal the legislation and reverse the administrative health care policies that have done such harm with speed and ferocity. But it will be equally important to rebuild our country’s health programs so that they do a much better job serving the millions of Americans, including Latinos, who rely on them for the health and well-being of their families and communities,” reads the UnidosUS report.
