Josh Bivens, chief economist at nonpartisan think tank the Economic Policy Institute, said if the bill passes as-is, health providers would see a steep increase in what is known as uncompensated care, when people without coverage get sick but cannot afford to pay their medical bill.
“It means hospitals and doctors no longer receive that income stream from Medicaid payments,” Bivens pointed out. “Lots of them are going to be forced out of business and there’s going to be closures of hospitals, especially in rural counties.”
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Six Nobel laureate economists have signed an open letter opposing cuts to safety net programs in the budget reconciliation bill, warning the measure would add $5 trillion to the national debt.
While headlines about the latest Trump-Musk feud may catch more people’s attention, Bivens added the bill will have the biggest effects on Coloradans.
“I think the fact that six Nobel Prize winners said, ‘This is important enough for me to try to draw attention to the implications of this bill,’ should make people realize the stakes are really large,” Bivens emphasized.
Public News Service
June 16, 2025
Using methods similar to the Department of Commerce and the Economic Policy Institute, we estimate by 2024 the premium had more than halved since the 1980s.
The Economist
June 16, 2025
Critics of state DOGEs argue that the work is mostly performative and designed to strengthen their governors while weakening agencies and legislatures, undermining government service in favor of the wealthy. In April, the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute said Republican states and governors see their DOGEs as a way of “demonstrating their loyalty to the Trump administration.”
“State policymaking over the past several decades shows that DOGE’s activities at both the federal and state levels are merely a rebranding of conservatives’ long-running project to enact a policy agenda that prioritizes business and the wealthy at the expense of working people,” EPI said at the time. “Efforts to dismantle government and suppress opposition to their agenda are a necessary first step in that project.”
Route Fifty
June 16, 2025
And the country will need more of those workers to fill the gap left by the loss of undocumented workers, according to Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute.
“We’re going to see a really big push by the employer community to replace a lot of these workers with temporary work visas, so programs like H-2A and H-2B,” he said.
Those visas are primarily used in agriculture, construction and hospitality.
Big picture, Costa said these raids could hurt the labor market. “Immigration enforcement does not help U.S. workers, it does not open up jobs. There’s no evidence that that happens.”
Marketplace
June 16, 2025
If the Trump administration honestly wanted to end the dependency, it would raise wages. According to a 2016 study from the Economic Policy Institute, for every $1 increase to the wages of low-income workers, spending on government programs, including SNAP, would most likely drop by at least $5.2 billion a year. The same study found that raising the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020 would have reduced spending on government assistance each year by $17 billion (around $23 billion today). Those figures suggest that, even today, raising wages would save more money than SNAP work requirements do.
New York Times
June 16, 2025
Article source:
- Economic Policy Institute. “Wage Stagnation in 9 Charts.“
Investopedia
June 16, 2025
Or consider OSHA — the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. According to the Economic Policy Institute, since its inception OSHA has saved an estimated 712,000 lives and workplace fatalities have gone down by almost two-thirds — even as the size of the American workforce has doubled. But the Republicans aim to put a stop to this.
Daily Hampshire Gazette
June 16, 2025
States are also backsliding. Many are lowering the ages that children can work in unsafe jobs and increasing the hours they can work. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 31 states have introduced bills to weaken child labor protections in recent years.
Counterpunch
June 16, 2025
While studies like those done by the Economic Policy Institute show that wage growth is exceeding inflation, many Americans don’t feel that way.
Benzinga (via Yahoo! Finance)
June 16, 2025