Statement by the Pennsylvania Health Law Project (PHLP) on the Passage of the Budget Bill Containing the Biggest Medicaid Cuts in History

JULY 8, 2025 — Last week, Congress passed a final budget reconciliation bill that guts Medicaid and other social safety net programs and rips healthcare away from 17 million Americans. The Pennsylvania Health Law Project (PHLP) is deeply disappointed in this bill, which the President signed into law on Friday, and which includes the biggest cuts to Medicaid in history. This law will lead to hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians losing healthcare and will have a significant impact on the accessibility and affordability of healthcare across the Commonwealth.

Despite the disappointing outcome, we acknowledge and sincerely thank our clients, partners, and all those across Pennsylvania who shared their personal Medicaid stories. We also want to thank everyone who made calls to Congress or took other actions to try to stop these devastating cuts. PHLP is proud of the work our clients, staff, and partners have done to track the developments and educate the community and other stakeholders about the proposals and their impact on Pennsylvanians.

As an organization dedicated to ensuring healthcare access for historically underserved and marginalized communities, PHLP stands ready to leverage our legal expertise and decades of experience helping Pennsylvanians navigate complex health systems and enforcing their legal rights to get the care they need.  We look forward to continuing to support and raise client voices and collaborate with partners across Pennsylvania to mitigate the harm resulting from these cuts.

Over the weeks, months, and years to come, we will work diligently to ensure that people who rely on Medicaid are informed about any changes that could impact them, as well as advocate to ensure they get a seat at the table as policies implementing the new law are developed.  We will continue to share what we learn and educate the community and our partners about the law and its impacts. As always, we will continue providing high quality, free legal services to help Pennsylvanians understand and navigate these changes and, when appropriate, enforce their rights through legal challenges and appeals.

We are working to absorb the full text of the new law and will provide a more detailed analysis soon. For now, it is important to know that nothing has changed about Medicaid yet, and everyone can and should continue to apply for and access their coverage and services as they normally would.  If you have problems accessing care and need legal help, call PHLP’s Helpline at 1-800-274-3258 or email us at staff@phlp.org. If you are not already signed up for our email list, please sign up today to ensure that you get our future updates and alerts.

Thank you for working to protect healthcare access. We look forward to working together to meet the challenges ahead.

Warm Regards,

Danna Casserly & Erin Guay,
PHLP Co-Executive Directors