Recent cuts to the Affordable Care Act by the Trump Administration are being met with backlash from local and state leaders.
In July 2025, President Donald Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which reduced funding for New York’s Essential Plan by more than $7.5 billion. Part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Essential Plan provided coverage to 1.7 million New Yorkers in 2025. To preserve the program, the state reduced the eligibility for the program from 250 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) to 200 percent FPL. The reduced funding took effect on July 1, threatening the coverage of 450,000 people in the state, one month after the federal Department of Health and Human Services released new rules for the ACA favoring catastrophic health insurance plans with high out-of-pocket costs.
On July 30, a small crowd gathered outside the James Hanley Federal Building in downtown Syracuse to protest federal changes to Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act. At the event, New York state assemblymember Pamela Hunter condemned the Essential Plan cuts, saying a higher number of uninsured people in the population will create ripple effects throughout an already stressed health care system.
“There are people in our midst, [who] because of the Essential Plan [cut] no longer have insurance,” Hunter said. “That means they're going to be at the emergency room, and we already know what's happening at the emergency rooms across our communities.”
As of July 31, the New York State Department of Health (DOH) reports that 56 percent of New Yorkers losing Essential Plan coverage were able to enroll in other forms of insurance through DOH, namely Medicaid and Qualified Health Plans. However, many of those enrollees ended up in silver and bronze-level health insurance plans, which have lower premiums but higher deductibles and out-of-pocket costs than the Essential Plan, which had no deductible.
Onondaga County Legislator Maurice Brown — who unseated longtime Assemblyman William Magnarelli in July in the Democratic primary for state legislature — said the state legislature should be able to protect New Yorkers from losing Essential Plan coverage. Raising taxes on the state’s wealthiest, he said, should be a way to protect against federal cuts.
“The state recognizes this is a problem, I just think the state has struggled to raise the revenue,” Brown said. “The state has been reluctant to raise revenue [taxes] on our highest earners. I think if we do that, we will have the revenue to protect Central New Yorkers from these cuts.”
State data show that from May 3 to July 26, the number of people in Onondaga County enrolled in the Essential Plan dropped from 23,536 to 17,233, respectively.
Following a July 20 event in Auburn, U.S. Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer told WAER that if Democrats retake both chambers of Congress in November’s elections, they will reverse the Trump administration’s cuts, including to the Essential Plan.
During a virtual press conference regarding the Trump administration’s recent end to a Medicare Part D subsidy, U.S. Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand did not say whether she supports bringing back the Essential Plan but predicted the cuts will work against Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.
“Rightly, New Yorkers are very angry,” Gillibrand said. “This fury with the Trump administration is going to propel a lot of candidates to flip the House and flip the Senate across the nation.”
Attorney General joins lawsuit
Additionally, New York is joining 21 other states in a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) over new changes to the ACA, Attorney General Letitia James announced Friday.
The lawsuit alleges new ACA rules imposed by DHS and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services are illegal and will result in five million people losing health coverage over the next five years, according to a news release from the AG’s office.
“This administration is trying to sabotage the Affordable Care Act through bureaucratic tricks instead of admitting it wants to take health insurance away from millions of Americans,” James wrote in the release.
The new rule favors bronze-level health insurance plans as well as catastrophic plans, which have extremely high deductibles. The rule also increases the eligibility verifications for people who apply for ACA coverage outside of the open enrollment window due to a qualifying event.
In an email statement, a spokesperson for DOH said: “Though the Department cannot comment on pending litigation, the Department remains committed to protecting New Yorkers' access to quality health care and affordable health insurance coverage.”
Similarly, a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s office said it does not have available estimates of how many people in New York State or Onondaga County would lose coverage because of the rule changes.
