If Congress passes the budget reconciliation bill, more than 4 million Latinos are likely to become uninsured
Blog post by UnidosUS, a member of CHN
Editor’s note: This piece was published by UnidosUS on June 17, 2025 and is cross-posted with permission. UnidosUS is a member of the Coalition on Human Needs.
In May, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget reconciliation bill that would take away health insurance from millions of Americans. According to our analysis, the people expected to become uninsured as a result of the legislation include more than 4 million Latinos.
The U.S. Senate is now working on its version of the bill, which cuts health programs even more deeply than in the House-passed legislation. Senate leadership aims to pass the bill the week of June 23, send it to the House for final agreement and have it signed into law before the Fourth of July.
Our analysis provides the first published estimates of budget reconciliation’s impact on the number of uninsured, by race and ethnicity. It also places its findings in historical context:
- If an additional 4.1 million Latinos become uninsured, the resulting increase in the proportion of Latinos without health coverage would be more than twice the size of the largest past increase in history.
- An additional 6.3% of Latinos would become uninsured, compared to the additional 2.5% of Latinos who became uninsured between 1987 and 1989, the largest past rise recorded in Census Bureau data.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has not yet estimated the effects of the Senate proposal, which is not finalized. But we know that the House’s similar budget bill proposes more than $1 trillion in cuts to federal health programs. Those would be, by far, the largest cuts in American history to Medicaid and health coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). CBO projects that, as a result, 16 million Americans would become uninsured.
More than 25 million Hispanics rely on Medicaid and ACA insurance for health care coverage. If, as estimated by UnidosUS, 4.1 million of them become uninsured, that would be the equivalent of taking health care away from every Latino who lives in New England or the Upper Midwest. In other words, that would be like all the Latino residents of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri, Minnesota, Kansas, Iowa and Wisconsin combined losing their health coverage.
Thousands of Hispanics are estimated to become uninsured, in every state, if the budget reconciliation bill becomes law (see Table 1). But in some states, the losses in Latino communities would be particularly widespread. People losing health care coverage include: (see Table 2):
- Nearly 1 million Latinos in California.
- More than 700,000 Latinos in Texas and Florida.
- More than 200,000 Latinos in New York.
- More than 100,000 Latinos in New Jersey, Arizona and Illinois.
- More than 80,000 Latinos in Georgia.
- More than 70,000 Latinos in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
Table 1. Number of Latinos, by state, estimated to lose health insurance under the House budget reconciliation bill sent to the Senate
| State | Latinos becoming newly uninsured |
| Alabama | 16,000 |
| Alaska | 4,000 |
| Arizona | 109,000 |
| Arkansas | 12,000 |
| California | 955,000 |
| Colorado | 65,000 |
| Connecticut | 39,000 |
| Delaware | 6,000 |
| District Of Columbia | 3,000 |
| Florida | 743,000 |
| Georgia | 82,000 |
| Hawaii | 6,000 |
| Idaho | 14,000 |
| Illinois | 106,000 |
| Indiana | 28,000 |
| Iowa | 8,000 |
| Kansas | 18,000 |
| Kentucky | 9,000 |
| Louisiana | 15,000 |
| Maine | 1,000 |
| Maryland | 36,000 |
| Massachusetts | 63,000 |
| Michigan | 32,000 |
| Minnesota | 18,000 |
| Mississippi | 7,000 |
| Missouri | 15,000 |
| Montana | 4,000 |
| Nebraska | 12,000 |
| Nevada | 46,000 |
| New Hampshire | 6,000 |
| New Jersey | 112,000 |
| New Mexico | 64,000 |
| New York | 247,000 |
| North Carolina | 73,000 |
| North Dakota | 2,000 |
| Ohio | 25,000 |
| Oklahoma | 28,000 |
| Oregon | 38,000 |
| Pennsylvania | 77,000 |
| Rhode Island | 13,000 |
| South Carolina | 21,000 |
| South Dakota | 2,000 |
| Tennessee | 23,000 |
| Texas | 772,000 |
| Utah | 35,000 |
| Vermont | 1,000 |
| Virginia | 47,000 |
| Washington | 53,000 |
| West Virginia | 2,000 |
| Wisconsin | 25,000 |
| Wyoming | 4,000 |
| National Total | 4,140,000 |
Sources: Analysis of data from CBO 2025; Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) January 2025; Manatt Health June 2025; HHS Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) October 2024; CMS May 2025; American Community Survey (ACS) data for 2023, accessed via IPUMS USA, University of Minnesota, www.ipums.org (IPUMS). For information about how these numbers were calculated, see UnidosUS coverage analysis.
Table 2. The 10 states with the highest number of Latinos estimated to lose health insurance under the House budget reconciliation bill sent to the Senate
| Rank | State | Estimated number of Latinos becoming newly uninsured |
| 1 | California | 955,000 |
| 2 | Texas | 722,000 |
| 3 | Florida | 743,000 |
| 4 | New York | 247,000 |
| 5 | New Jersey | 112,000 |
| 6 | Arizona | 109,000 |
| 7 | Illinois | 106,000 |
| 8 | Georgia | 82,000 |
| 9 | Pennsylvania | 77,000 |
| 10 | North Carolina | 73,000 |
Sources: See Table 1, above.
We also found that the budget bill will terminate health insurance for:
- 7.7 million non-Hispanic whites.
- 2.6 million African Americans.
- 1.1 million Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.
- 200,000 Native Americans.
- 300,000 people who identify with multiple or other races.
A matter of life and death
In recent years, abundant research has demonstrated the importance of health coverage in enabling the early detection and effective treatment of chronic illness, preventing hospitalization and premature death, and keeping families from going into debt. Based on that work, researchers from Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania recently found that the budget bill’s cuts to insurance coverage would cause nearly 30,000 preventable deaths each year.
Americans of all races and ethnicities will suffer needless tragedy if Congress adopts this extreme and reckless legislation. But the damage will be particularly widespread among Latino families and in other historically marginalized American communities.
Nearly all Members of Congress claim to support health care for their deserving constituents, including Latinos. But now it is their time to act, not just talk. The Latino community will be watching carefully to see who votes to protect hard-working Hispanic American families from terrible cuts to health care and other basic needs programs — and who does not.
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