Fox News personalities have repeatedly accused immigrants of bankrupting hospitals, but new research shows that President Donald Trump’s proposed so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” is the real threat.

Analysis from KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation, found that the bill Trump and congressional Republicans are seeking to advance — which would slash Medicaid and other health care spending to cover tax cuts for the extremely wealthy — could decimate hospitals throughout the country, especially facilities with high proportions of Medicaid patients and those outside of urban centers. 

“Financial pressure on hospitals could affect patient care to the extent that hospitals respond by cutting certain expenses—such as by offering fewer services, laying off staff, or investing less in quality improvements—or close altogether, especially in rural areas,” KFF found. 

The Big Beautiful Bill could decimate hospitals that serve Medicaid patients

According to the Congressional Budget Office, Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” — which passed the House and is currently being negotiated in the Senate — is projected to leave 10.9 million more people uninsured, including 7.8 million people currently on Medicaid. Those numbers increase when coupled with other Republican policies, such as allowing the Affordable Care Act tax credit to expire. In all, if the GOP gets its way, an estimated 16 million people could lose their health insurance over the next decade. As KFF notes, “The substantial increase in uninsured Americans would likely lead to more uncompensated care, putting an additional strain on hospital finances.”

On June 16, the Senate Finance Committee released its version of the legislation, which includes additional cuts to Medicaid funding that could further drain hospital resources. The American Prospect and Politico first reported that the Senate Finance Committee lowered the cap on Medicaid provider taxes, a way for states and hospitals to access federal funding, from 6% to 3.5%. Currently, the House version of the bill would freeze provider taxes nationwide and prevent states from establishing new ones, which already amounts to a de facto cut to Medicaid. Although the new Senate policy on provider taxes would exempt states that didn’t expand Medicaid through the ACA, it could still have nationwide implications, as 47 states and Washington, D.C., have at least one provider tax greater than 3.5%. The Senate version also expands on work requirements added by the House, already the strictest ever put forward, by forcing parents of children over 14 years old to meet the burdensome paperwork obligations. 

Hospitals across the country are already under enormous financial pressure, especially those that serve low-income populations. KFF found that hospitals that serve large numbers of Medicaid recipients “in urban and rural areas were more likely than others to have negative margins” and “could be disproportionately affected by the House-passed bill.” The analysis also showed that a “larger share of rural versus urban hospitals had negative margins.” 

Overall, KFF found that in 29 states, at least 40% of hospitals operated with negative margins in 2023, making them particularly vulnerable to spending cuts in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” 

Research commissioned by congressional Democrats from the University of North Carolina's Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research bolstered KFF’s warning. The Sheps Center found that 338 rural hospitals could be at risk of closing as a result of Trump’s budget bill.

And contrary to right-wing assertions that immigrants are a drain on public services, research has shown that health care costs for immigrants are actually far lower than for native-born citizens. In fact, a 2022 study found that immigrants — especially undocumented people — pay billions of dollars more into the health care system than they use, thereby subsidizing costs for the native born.  

Yet despite the clear threat that Republican policies pose to hospitals, Fox News stars are feeding their audiences a narrative that falsely blames immigrants for putting health care centers at risk.

Fox News personalities blame immigrants for bankrupting hospitals

Since Trump’s election, right-wing media have waged an all-out campaign to support Republicans’ ongoing attempts to slash Medicaid — an evolution of the party’s long-running effort to overturn the Affordable Care Act. 

But in the year before Trump took office, Fox News personalities were falsely blaming immigrants for bankrupting hospitals and threatening patients’ health care. 

• On his radio show, Fox News host Sean Hannity claimed that “Biden’s illegals, by the way, they are bankrupting America’s hospitals.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 3/15/24]
• Fox News host Laura Ingraham said that undocumented immigrants getting care in Texas was “absolutely going to bankrupt multiple hospital systems.” She added: “This is catastrophic.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/12/24]
• Fox News senior medical analyst Marc Siegel also discussed the health care system in Texas, claiming, “The hospitals go broke covering the care of illegal immigrants that are coming into this country.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/12/24] 
• On his radio show, Fox News host Mark Levin relayed an anecdote from a “cardiologist friend of mine” who “had a patient who was here illegally who was in the hospital for five months with a heart condition,” concluding, “This is what's destroying our medical system, our health care system.” Levin added: “You wonder why your medical costs are going up? We have people on the dole in our own country, people on the dole in foreign countries. These hospitals just can't afford it.” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 6/10/24]
• Strategic Wealth Partners CEO and frequent Fox Business guest Mark Tepper claimed that U.S. citizens “can no longer access health care because the hospitals are overrun with migrants” and that, as a result, “the hospitals are now under water financially as well.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, 9/12/24]
• After Hannity asked his then-colleague at Fox News Jeanine Pirro why Democrats are “so hell-bent on the rights of illegals,” Pirro claimed that “some hospitals are going broke, like in Denver, Colorado,” as a result of treating immigrants. In fact, the hospital Pirro appeared to be referencing, Denver Health, had been under financial strain for years, in part because private insurance companies “Aetna and United Healthcare — two of the larger plans in Colorado — pay Denver Health less on average than they do for care” in other hospitals, according to the Denver Post. The hospital has recovered financially somewhat in the months since Pirro’s comments, but “not enough to offset Denver Health’s losses if the federal government made significant cuts to Medicaid,” the Denver Post reported last month. [Fox News, Hannity, 9/13/24; Denver Post, 4/28/24; Denver Post, 5/12/25]