New Englanders clash over Trump's sweeping health reforms

Boston Globe

a day ago

And he is not alone. In a recent Globe survey of 11 New Englanders across the political spectrum, all seven respondents who voted against Trump
said they worry that basic health insurance and many vaccines will be harder to obtain for those who need them
if the Big Beautiful Bill becomes law.
The four respondents who voted for Trump, despite being
unfamiliar with many of the legislation's specifics, said they support changes to health care programs to repair what some of them called a broken, bloated system.
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The voters were surveyed as part of an ongoing Globe series on their views on the first year of the Trump administration, with previous installments centered on
The cost of health care has been a major focus for Trump, who has said he wants to eliminate waste and fraud from programs such as Medicaid. The president has said he wants the legislation passed before July 4.
But along with savings, Trantham noted, many experts predict that more Americans will end up uninsured if Trump's vision becomes the new landscape of national health care.
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'There will be more people who can't afford their medications. There'll be more people who avoid going to the doctor because they don't have the money,' said Trantham, who is an unenrolled voter and voted for former vice president Kamala Harris
in 2024.
'And then they'll end up needing a higher level of medical care, which then puts a broad burden on the rest of us,' he added.
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Trump's
passed by the House, many
The agency also predicted that 4 million people could see their access to food stamps reduced or eliminated.
In addition to benefit cuts, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the House bill would increase the US deficit by $2.4 trillion over the next decade. And on Thursday,
Joann Flaminio, 69, a retired Democrat from Providence, said she is concerned that few people are aware of the myriad dangers tucked into the sprawling bill.
'The devil really is in the details. And one of the proposals in the Big Beautiful Bill — that requires Medicaid recipients to re-enroll every six months — is a draconian measure designed to deny services to those most in need,' said Flaminio, who served as retirement administrator for the state of Rhode Island.
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'My sister was on Medicaid in the final years of her life, and I know what the application process is like in order to get somebody approved. Many people hire a lawyer in order to do that, but it can be arduous, and it certainly is,' she added.
The president's bill also would impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients, from ages 19 to 64, who would need to work at least 80 hours per month if they did not qualify for exemptions. From her experience, Flaminio said, linking benefits to work requirements is impractical.
'We tried to mandate work requirements ... for those people who are on disability benefits,' Flaminio said. 'And I would say, for the most part, it's a waste of time and effort. The vast majority of recipients, an estimated 96 percent, cannot work, which is the reason why they apply for Medicaid in the first place.'
But for the survey's Trump supporters, trimming the Medicaid rolls is worthwhile if it rids the system of fraud and abuse.
Seth Sole-Robertson, a 45-year-old Republican from Medway, was asked if Medicaid cuts concern him.
'I'd be concerned if I was an illegal alien,' Sole-Robertson answered, 'and I'd be concerned if I were committing fraud.'
The goal is to strip benefits from 'people who are ineligible or taking it in two different states,' said Sole-Robertson, who owns a marine repair business. 'There's lots of hoopla or fake news about what's going on with Medicaid.'
Karen Sysyn, 54, an unenrolled Trump supporter from Londonderry, N.H., said she wasn't sure where the bill was headed or what was in it. 'I hear a lot of rumors that they're looking at cutting Social Security and disability and stuff like that,' she said.
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If people are able to work, taxpayers should not bear their burden, said Sysyn, who is searching for work after losing her job as a housing inspector. But if people are genuinely in need of support from Social Security or Medicare, they should receive support, she added.
Another unenrolled Trump supporter, 56-year-old Brian Jankins of Sutton, was asked what he knew about the bill.
'Full disclosure, very little,' said Jankins, who works in banking.
However, he added, 'our current health care system is broken and dysfunctional ... I'm not versed in what this bill does to address that, but it is broken.'
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Respondents' opinions about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, also were sharply divided, with Trump supporters endorsing his stance against vaccines, among other initiatives, and the president's opponents saying Kennedy was endangering lives.
'I think more Americans are going to die under some of the changes that he's making around vaccinations,' said Vanessa Coppola, a 42-year-old Democrat from North Yarmouth, Maine.
Over the administration's first five months, Kennedy became a lightning rod for controversy because of his antivaccine stance, his references to autism as a preventable disease, and his ouster and replacement of the entire immunization advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Coppola, a job coach and consultant, is particularly worried about Kennedy's proposal to eliminate the COVID vaccine recommendation for healthy pregnant women. Those vaccinations provide coverage for newborns, who are particularly vulnerable to respiratory disease, she said.
Anand Sharma, 53, a Democrat from Shrewsbury and electrical engineer, called the rolling drama at the Department of Health and Human Services part of 'the chaos [that] is everywhere right now.'
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And Justina Perry, a 37-year-old Democrat from New Bedford, denounced Kennedy's antivaccine agenda.
'Viruses are going to love this,' said Perry, who runs a physical therapy clinic. 'They're going to be able to spread and spread, and they win in this situation because we're pulling back vaccine access. So the only one who should be excited about this is a virus.'
But Darryll White, an unenrolled Trump voter from Skowhegan, Maine, supports Kennedy's efforts to change government guidance on vaccines.
Kennedy's work is 'a long-haul scenario — to make America healthy again,' said White, 66, who added that efforts by the news media to 'demonize' the secretary have made his job harder.
'People have to understand that Robert Kennedy is under intense pressure,' added White, the director of a nonprofit community park.
White said he supports Kennedy's proposal to upend the government's vaccine guidance. 'That's exactly what needs to happen,' said White, who believed the government was not transparent during the pandemic about possible adverse effects of the COVID vaccine.
The respondents were sharply divided yet again about the administration's drastic cuts in medical research grants, and those views aligned with whether they had voted for the president. The cuts have had an outsize effect on universities and other research institutions in the Boston area, particularly at Harvard University, where the government has canceled about $2.6 billion in awarded grants.
'He's cutting off his nose to spite his face,' Rosemary Shea, 62, an unenrolled voter from Hampton, N.H., said of Trump, who she voted against. 'I mean, Harvard is not just doing this research for themselves. They're doing it for the world.'
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'These universities are doing great research for diseases that are still out there that we have not cracked yet — Parkinson's, cancer, all different types of cancers," Shea added. 'He's just decided 'nope.' And I haven't even heard a logical explanation for it.'
Sole-Robertson, the Medway Republican, offered a sharply different take on the government's role in funding medical research.
'A lot of this needs to be shifted back to private industry and raising funds in the private sector,' he said. 'I think a lot of it is just pure nonsense.'
Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at