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Las Vegas Sun: 'Big Beautiful Bill' jeopardizes 100,000 Nevadans’ care, congresswoman says

July 2, 2025

Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev., painted a dark picture Tuesday morning should the Republican-led “Big Beautiful Bill” get through Congress and be signed into law: more than 100,000 Nevadans losing health care, an exacerbated doctor shortage and shuttered health centers.

“We’re obviously here to sound the alarm,” Lee said at a local nursing facility just after the Senate approved its version of the reconciliation bill. “I’m flying out this evening to vote against it, and so there’s still some hope that maybe some of my Republican colleagues will stand up.”

Under the Senate bill, almost 12 million people could lose health coverage by 2034, according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Lee said her priority for when she returns to Washington is stopping the legislation.

With Republican majorities in the House and Senate and President Donald Trump in the White House, that isn’t likely.

“We have a doctor shortage already. How are we going to attract more doctors to our state when you’re seeing $7 billion in cuts to Medicaid?” Lee said. “When people become uninsured, when they get kicked off of Medicaid, they show up in our facilities … and the cost of that service gets passed on to all of us.”

While both major health provisions would save hundreds of billions of dollars for the federal government, the overall plan would raise the national debt by over $3 trillion over the next decade, the CBO also found.

Speaking directly to fiscal hawks within his party over Truth Social, Trump insisted that the growth following the bill would “make it all up, times 10.” Lee disputed the president's promise Tuesday, saying that an analysis accounting for growth still says it would create trillions in debt.

“We’re literally asking our children, our grandchildren, to pay for these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans,” Lee said. “It’s not just hospitals and nursing homes that will turn the patients away or close down, but it jeopardizes hundreds of clinics.”

Nevada Health Care Association President Brett Salmon said at the news conference that Medicaid supported the state’s most vulnerable populations, noting that 60% of Nevada nursing homes residents were on the program.

Any cuts to Medicaid, Salmon said, would have consequences for local long-term health facilities.

“Reductions in Medicaid would impact our ability to operate and care for our residents. It would strain our ability to retain staff, invest in care improvements and meet the growing demand for services,” he said. “We should be working to strengthen Medicaid.”

Though the process is not over yet, as the House of Representatives will either concur with the Senate version or propose changes of its own. During the reconciliation process, Democrats have worked with some Republicans to chip away at some of its more controversial policies.

Lee said she’d like to see the cuts to Medicaid in the Senate version brought down to where they were when the bill passed the House, but she reiterated that Republicans were directly responsible for any reduction.

Lee didn’t answer directly if she had spoken to Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., about her concerns, but said she’s had conversations with “a lot” of her Republican counterparts.

“They understand. (Amodei) knows what’s in this bill,” Lee said. “The governor wrote a letter to the president explaining what that exactly would mean to the state of Nevada, so they understand full well the impacts that these cuts will have on health care.”

Issues: Health Care