BY RICHARD SKOLNIK
White Rock

Dr. Shin’s adulation for Donald Trump’s economic policies are extraordinarily short-sighted. They are especially disappointing to me, given that Dr. Shin is a healthcare provider. See https://losalamosreporter.com/2025/06/10/republican-party-chair-lisa-shin-shares-june-news-opinion-on-one-big-beautiful-bill-and-archbishop-westers-column/

To assist Dr. Shin’s consideration of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” and Trump’s economic policies, I would like to remind her, for a start, of the following negative impacts of the bill on the US economy and on the American people.

 The non-partisan congressional budget office (CBO) says that the bill will add $2.4 trillion to the federal deficit from 2025-2034.

 According to the CBO, the potential increase in federal debt service costs as a result of the bill will be $551 billion over the above 10 years.

 The CBO also estimated that the bill will lead to an increase in debt as a share of GDP to an increasingly unsustainable 124%.

 The CBO estimates that the bill would increase the number of people without health by 10.9 million. This will lead to delays in people’s seeking care, more illness and a loss of productivity among the uninsured, and an increase in uncompensated costs for healthcare providers and hospitals. Increasing the number of Americans who lack health insurance also poses risks to the health of everyone else.

 Automatic cuts to Medicare beginning in 2026 and cuts for seniors eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid are likely to lead to reduced patient access and increased patient costs. It has been estimated that these, together with changes to the Affordable Care Act, could lead to 50,000 preventable deaths a year.

 It is also clear that the “One Big Beautiful Bill” will be a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and middle-class to the well-off and to corporations. As we have learned from earlier tax cuts of this type, such cuts do not produce higher rates of economic growth. Rather “trickle down economics” has produced no lasting boost to GDP, minimal impact on wages, and increasing inequality.

Beyond the above, we can look forward to negative economic and health consequences from the following, among other things: tariffs, reductions in university-related scientific research, cutting NIH’s in-house research and clinical practice, the decimation of CDC, and the gutting of US support for global health.

Rather than promoting the “American Dream,” the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” is the biggest attack on it for generations