As millions of working-class Americans suffer from President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans' cuts to the already dysfunctional US healthcare system, a leading anti-monopoly group this week released a report with recommendations to restore "affordability and control to patients, clinicians, and communities across the country."…
Page H2From§Eachthe supper edition — 3 September 2026
Abbott demands $10 billion in withheld Medicaid funds the same week 10 million lose coverage under Trump.
As it ran on the front
On Thursday, healthcare analyst Charles Gaba totaled up what nineteen months of Trump's second term have done to the country's insurance rolls and came out with a number the analysis calls "up to 10 million." The count breaks down by program: 5.9 million fewer people enrolled in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, and at least 4.5 million fewer enrolled through the Affordable Care Act, since January 2025. Medicare, over the same stretch, gained about 1.6 million people, an increase Gaba's report says "somewhat mitigated" the rest of the ledger — not erased it, not reconciled it, just mitigated it, the word for what an analyst writes down when the columns don't quite close instead of rounding them off, hon.
The same week the report landed, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas was in Washington's face about a different set of numbers: nearly $10 billion in Medicaid funding the federal government is withholding over what it says is Texas's noncompliance with program rules. Abbott says pay up regardless. Texas hospitals told the state they expected to start losing $27 million a day in reimbursements beginning Tuesday if the money didn't move — a projection, not yet a bill collected, but the kind of projection hospitals don't publish for fun.…
…(cont) Run that ledger against the week before it and the pattern holds. On August 27, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stood at a podium in Florida and said he didn't believe food-aid cuts would have "that much effect," the same day data showed 5 million people, 1.5 million of them children, had already lost that assistance. That same day, Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee published their own total: the average family has paid $3,800 more for housing, groceries, and utilities since Trump took office, groceries alone running $310 higher last year. The day after that, an anti-monopoly group priced the other side of the ledger — over $6,000 a year in savings sitting on the table if healthcare consolidation were broken up instead of protected.
None of these is the same account. Gaba counts coverage. Abbott counts a specific $10 billion Texas hospitals are owed and haven't been paid. The Joint Economic Committee counts what a family spends. What they share is a federal government that treats $10 billion as a live, negotiable, releasable figure the moment a governor calls about it, and treats 10 million as a background statistic when nobody with a budget office attached is the one asking.
“Ten million people get dropped and the checkbook doesn't even open for that — but a governor asks for his ten billion and suddenly Washington's got chairs at the table again. Funny how the money's always "stuck in compliance review" until someone with a state behind them calls, and the people who actually lost the coverage don't get a number to dial at all. That's not a budget problem, that's a phone book problem — you're just not in it.”
“Look, nobody's against Texas hospitals getting paid what they're owed — this is about program integrity, making sure Medicaid dollars follow the rules before they follow the money, that's just good stewardship. And the ten million figure, that's one analyst's estimate, people move between programs, they age into Medicare, it's not like — okay, and Kennedy said the food-aid cuts wouldn't have "that much effect," I didn't say that, HHS said that, don't put that on me.”
The receipts
US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday dismissed the impact of massive food aid cuts signed into law last summer by President Donald Trump, saying he doesn't believe the cuts will have "that much effect"…
Independent healthcare analyst Charles Gaba on Thursday published a detailed report estimating that up to 10 million people living in the US have lost their healthcare coverage since the start of President Donald Trump's second term. In his analysis, Gaba brought together the most recent enrollment data for Medicaid, the Children's…
The average family in the United States has had to pay a total of $3,800 more for housing, groceries, utilities, and other essentials during President Donald Trump's second term in the White House, according to an analysis released…
Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) on Wednesday increased pressure on the Trump administration to release nearly $10 billion in Medicaid funding, dismissing Washington’s concerns that Texas is not in full compliance with regulations. Abbott’s warning came after Texas hospitals raised the alert that they expected to start losing $27 million in…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.