Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, who is reportedly considering a run for president in 2028, is amplifying The Guardian article ‘People Are Going to Die: How Medicaid Work Requirements Cost People Their Health Insurance’ on social media.
The subtitle reads: “Those caring for relatives with severe disabilities say planned Republican cuts will be fatal for some.”
Newsom, who recently called Trump a “truly disturbed person,” wrote: “Thousands of Americans will likely die because of your bill, @realDonaldTrump. Your massive cuts to Medicaid will leave vulnerable people uninsured, in debt, and at extreme risk. How do you live with yourself?”
Thousands of Americans will likely die because of your bill, @realDonaldTrump.
Your massive cuts to Medicaid will leave vulnerable people uninsured, in debt, and at extreme risk.
How do you live with yourself? pic.twitter.com/Rl5WMCklXI
— Governor Gavin Newsom (@CAgovernor) June 26, 2025
MAGA supporters are responding to Newsom with vitriol and accusations (“you’re lying”) — and some are asking “says who?” and “where’s your proof?”
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) — self-described as a nonpartisan research and policy institute — reports that the “CBO estimated that the House reconciliation bill would lead to 5.2 million people losing Medicaid coverage, with 4.8 million people becoming uninsured.”
The CBPP also alerts that the “CBO’s estimates of coverage loss under Medicaid work requirements proposals have been lower than estimates from CBPP, the Urban Institute, and the Brookings Institution.”
Public health researchers at Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania have written a letter to the Senate warning that “provisions in the House-passed federal budget reconciliation bill could lead to more than 51,000 deaths annually if enacted,” citing Medicaid cuts that would impact nursing homes and ACA enrollment.
[NOTE: The potential loss of life vs. cost savings calculation has not gone unacknowledged by Republican legislators, as seen in Republican Sen. Joni Ernst’s controversial response to the proposed Medicaid cuts. Ernst told a town hall concerned about losing coverage: “”Well, we all are going to die.”]
The Guardian article quotes several people including Arkansas resident Kelly Fountain, a mother of a 24-year-old man with disabilities (a rare genetic condition, haploinsufficiency syndrome, autism and other health and developmental issues).
Fountain said: “If Trump’s budget is passed as it is currently written, we will be leaving Arkansas,” said Fountain. “Our politicians here know very well that people are going to lose their Medicaid, they’re depending on it. People are not only going to lose their healthcare, they’re going to die.”
Arkansas has been down this road before. In 2018 during Trump’s first term, Arkansas “became the first state to establish a work requirement for adults enrolled through its Medicaid expansion program, starting with 30-to-49-year-olds with incomes below the federal poverty level (FPL),” as the Urban Institute reports.
Though “automatic exemptions were granted for parents living with dependent children and certain other groups,” a study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that “the requirement led to the disenrollment of more than 18,000 adults over four months before a 2019 federal court ruling halted further implementation.”
Fountain told The Guardian: “At one point in time, if we’re fortunate, we’re all going to be disabled at some point in our lives. We all deserve healthcare. It should not depend on whether or not we can find a job. We should be able to access healthcare when we are at our sickest and most vulnerable, and right now Congress wants to eliminate that availability.”
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman summed up the existing data on the “big beautiful bill” and the current political reality this way: “Republicans appear highly likely to pass legislation that combines big tax cuts for the rich with savage cuts to programs that help lower-income Americans, including Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps).”