Congressman Wesley Bell (D-Mo.) was among the House members, including two Republicans, who voted against the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which strips millions of dollars from Missouri Medicaid and will likely leave thousands of the state’s residents without access to health care.
“The shameful bill Republicans just rammed through in the dead of night hands a massive tax break to the richest Americans, while folks in St. Louis are stuck holding the bill,” said Bell who represents the 1st Congressional District.
Republican U.S. Rep Ann Wagner of the 2nd Congressional District voted for the bill, which passed by a single vote.
One in five Missourians is on Medicaid, or over 1.2 million people. Missouri’s Medicaid program covers 39% of all children in the state and pays for two-thirds of nursing home care.
According to Bell’s office, Wagner helped pass a bill that “guts Medicaid, cutting nearly $600 million from Missouri’s health system and putting coverage for 33,000 of our neighbors in St. Louis at risk.
“It also slashes SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), making it harder for needy families to put food on the table. We are called to serve. To fight for working class families. To protect the vulnerable. To govern with a conscience. This bill fails every one of those tests.”
$300 billion would be cut from SNAP, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat who represents a district which includes Kansas City, said the proposed changes would have “disastrous consequences” in Missouri, where Medicaid access can be a “matter of life or death” for millions of enrollees.
“It will lead to sicker and more pain-filled communities. It will be a massive economic weight holding down Missouri families and small businesses alike, as more of our neighbors are stricken with increased medical debt,” Cleaver said.
According to nonpartisan estimates, the Republican tax plan would add more than $14 trillion to the national debt over the next decade while significantly cutting funding for programs like Medicaid and SNAP.
The Joint Economic Committee projects that roughly 13.7 million Americans would lose their health insurance under the proposed changes—more than 33,000 of them in Missouri’s First District.
If adopted by the U.S. Senate and sent to President Trump in its current form, the plan would extend tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the highest earners, with the top 0.1% receiving average annual tax breaks exceeding $300,000.
In a statement, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said the “big ugly bill” will have consequences for everyone, in the form of higher healthcare premiums, copays, and deductibles. But vulnerable people and communities will pay a particularly high price.”
“Hospitals will close, nursing homes will shut down, and communities will suffer,” Jeffries said.
“It will take food out of the mouths of children, seniors, and veterans at a time when too many families are already struggling to live paycheck to paycheck.”
U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley has called the Medicaid cuts morally wrong, and “political suicide,” for Republicans.
“Far be it for me to agree with Senator Hawley, but his point is well taken,” Bell said. “This is a slap in the face. It is an attack on working class families.”
The Senate is expected to rewrite much of it, before sending it back across the Capitol for final approval, a process likely to stretch through the summer.
Peril for Planned Parenthood
Ianthe Metzger, senior director at Planned Parenthood, told Word In Black that the bill helps Republicans achieve a long-sought goal: starving her organization of the federal dollars it needs to provide health care and preventive services for low-income women, a disproportionate number of whom are Black.
Although federal money can’t be used for abortions by law, the Medicaid cuts will keep Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid-eligible reimbursements for its other services, such as birth control, testing for sexually transmitted infections, and cancer screenings.
“If we’re not able to get the Medicaid reimbursement to provide those other services, then our health centers shut down and we can’t provide abortion care or anything else, either,” Metzger says.
Medicaid covers four in 10 births in the U.S. and is the largest single payer of pregnancy-related services. In recent years, voters in many Southern and Midwestern states approved abortion restrictions when Roe v. Wade was overturned; that, coupled with legislative assaults against Planned Parenthood, has made pregnancy even riskier for Black women, who already face the highest maternal mortality rates in the country.
“When you look at Black women, they often bear the brunt of reproductive restrictions, or just healthcare restrictions in general,” says Metzger. “And that is true when it comes to Medicaid, when it comes to defunding Planned Parenthood.”
“And when you [add] on top of that it being harder for Black women to get care that they need,” she said, “then it is going to be states that have abortion bans in the South and Midwest that will be the most impacted from Planned Parenthood being defunded and from Medicaid being cut across the board.”
Jennifer Porter Gore of Word In Black and Clara Bates, Jennifer Shutt and Ashley Murray of the Missouri Independent contributed to this report.