Health Experts: ​“Everyone Should Be Worried” About Trump Cuts

WASHINGTON — A panel of health experts, including Connecticut Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani, warned Congressional Democrats Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s proposed spending reductions threaten Americans’ public health, from young children to senior citizens.

A proposed $36 billion spending reduction for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the shedding of 20,000 employees means the loss of the expertise needed to respond to outbreaks, cuts in local offices and early childhood education, a rollback of efforts in areas such as anti-smoking campaigns and removing exposure to lead, and perhaps sharp reductions in health care for the elderly and poor under Medicaid, the experts testified. 

“We are all at greater risk by the seemingly indiscriminate cuts,” said Anne Schuchat, former principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who appeared with Juthani and Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. ​“People in public health are worried, but right now everyone should be worried.”

The hearing was called by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a New Haven Democrat and ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, and involved all seven Democrats on the subcommittee that approves funding for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — on which DeLauto also serves as the ranking member.

“The Republican majority has yet to hold the Trump administration accountable for its wanton destruction,” DeLauro said in her opening statement. ​“Elon Musk, President Trump, and RFK Jr. are gutting the lifesaving work of the Department of Health and Human Services and its key agencies — while Republicans in the Congress say and do nothing. They are walking away from public health.”

Already, the impact of layoffs and spending reductions have been felt, panelists and lawmakers said.

“This is not roads, bridges, helicopters,” DeLauro said. ​“This is people’s lives. People have died.”

HHS did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s federal budget cuts have cost the state Department of Public Health almost $150 million and the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services $5 million more, Juthani said.

With federal help, Connecticut reduced cigarette smoking rates among adults from 17 percent in 2011 to 8 percent in 2023, among high school students from 14 percent in 2011 to 3 percent in 2023, she said.

“With no expertise at the federal level to help inform state and local public health policies, I fear that we will slide backwards in this remarkable public health achievement that will undoubtedly result in more chronic conditions and higher health care costs,” Juthani said.

Measles, a disease all but eradicated due to widespread vaccinations, has made a comeback. Efforts to combat teen smoking and vaping are on the chopping block, as are programs to reduce deaths to mothers after giving birth -– for which the U.S. already has a higher rate than other developed countries — and to reduce lead poisoning in children. Progress in fighting cancer could be halted as research programs are eliminated.

Jha said American health experts worked with their colleagues overseas to fight ebola and other diseases before they migrated to the U.S. ​“That’s not luck,” he said.

And threatened Medicaid cuts could force hospitals and nursing homes to close. Layoffs threaten the end of drowning prevention programs; drowning is the most common cause of death for children ages 1 to 4.

“They’re doing it under the guise of efficiency but everything they’re doing is going to cost the taxpayer more,” Jha said. ​“We’re saving a few dollars today so we can spend many many times that in the months and years ahead.”

Already underserved populations, such as Blacks, Hispanics and rural Americans, will be hit harder than others by these budget cuts, Jha said.

“We are all going to be affected by the cuts that the administration is proposing but we are not all going to be affected equally,” Jha said. ​“They’re going to have a disproportionate impact on people who are traditionally underserved, people of lower means. …What that will mean is a society that will be more unequal.”

Lawmakers urged the panelists to speak out on the budget cuts and their impacts on Americans, because people aren’t listening to politicians.

“We stand up and say some of these things and no one is paying attention to us or they view what it is that we have to say as somehow political,” DeLauro said. ​“You have standing to dispel some of what is happening.”

Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman said that health care providers can talk about the threats without bashing the Trump administration or its policies.

“I am of the opinion that when someone is treating someone and that person is under a certain kind of health care, you can say in kind of a neutral way that we have to pay attention moving forward because we don’t want you to lose any of your health care,” said Watson Coleman, D‑N.J.

She said doctors don’t have the inherent partisanship of politicians.

“What is it that your colleagues can do? You are not a Republican, you are not a Democrat, you are not an independent. You are experts,” she said. ​“I don’t think there is a motivation here to make government efficient or effective. It is to dismantle it. I don’t think there is confusion on what is being shared with people. It is intentional lying.” 

Juthani said providers also have to build trust with their patients, however.

“At the end of the day, everybody worries about themselves, their family, the health and security of those who they love,” she said. ​“What we try to do every day is meet people where they’re at, talk to them in a way they can understand and hope to gain their trust that what we’re saying is truly in their best interests. That’s what we are trained to do.”