Tax Cuts for Corporations & CEOs; Higher Costs, Lost Coverage for Latino Families
Even as millions of Latinos face higher health insurance costs or complete loss of coverage due to Republican tax policies, big healthcare companies and their CEOs are enjoying huge tax cuts thanks to those same policies, according to a new report from Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF). The 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that was permanently extended last summer gave big tax cuts to corporations and wealthy individuals, but Republicans have refused to extend tax credits that make healthcare affordable for tens of millions of working people.
“Latino families face a catastrophic health care crisis this holiday season while the nation’s most profitable healthcare companies and their high-flying CEOs continue to enjoy billions in tax cuts that began eight years ago during the first Trump administration,” said David Kass, ATF’s executive director. “The Republican Congress should immediately reverse policies: extend the premium tax credits that make insurance purchased on the ACA marketplace affordable and pay for it by demanding massive corporations and their rich CEOs pay a fairer share of taxes.”
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the average ACA premium will go up by a thousand dollars next year if the premium tax credits are not extended–and it seems all but certain that they will not be. That thousand-dollar average obscures some much more extreme price hikes depending on age and household size. A married couple of 60-year-olds earning $85,000 a year, for instance, would see an annual premium increase of almost $25,000.
The Urban Institute estimates that a million fewer Latinos will have health insurance if the premium tax credits are not extended next year, their uninsured rate rising from 24% to 28%. They are among the almost five million people overall the Institute calculates will lose health insurance in 2026 if the credits are not extended.
Altogether 20 million enrollees in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace face often staggering price increases in their insurance premiums thanks to Republican tax policies, as healthcare providers–both for-profit and nonprofit–are enjoying huge benefits from that same GOP tax agenda.
The enhanced premium tax credits now in danger have been a great success story. Created by former President Biden and a Democratic Congress in 2021, they have more than doubled enrollment in the ACA. Particularly large gains have been made by Latinos, whose participation in the ACA marketplace jumped by almost 160% over the first three years of the enhanced program. Around three times as many Latinos got insurance through the ACA in 2024 as did in 2020.
While Latino families and other working people face huge premium increases and possible loss of coverage because of a change in tax policy, healthcare providers are lapping up huge tax-cut benefits. Seven of the nation’s largest healthcare corporations collectively saved an estimated $34 billion in taxes over the period 2018-24 because of the two-fifths cut in the corporate tax rate contained in the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law.
PROFITS SOARED BUT TAXES STAYED THE SAME UNDER 2017 CORPORATE-FRIENDLY TRUMP-GOP TAX LAW
SOURCE: AMERICANS FOR TAX FAIRNESS
Top bosses at these same companies have also benefited personally from the 2017 Republican law. Cuts in individual tax rates–for CEOs, the most important of which was the reduction in the top rate–potentially slashed their taxes by millions of dollars each. (See Methodology for a discussion of individual tax-savings estimates.)
Chief executives at 19 top healthcare firms could have collectively saved over $100 million in taxes over the first seven years of the GOP tax law. And those potential tax savings will continue in the future since the law was permanently extended last summer. The CEO of drugmaker Moderna was the biggest possible tax-cut winner: he could have saved almost $19 million in taxes on his staggering seven-year compensation of nearly $720 million.
CORPORATE HEALTHCARE CEOs COULD HAVE SAVED
MILLIONS EACH FROM GOP TAX CUTS
SOURCE: AMERICANS FOR TAX FAIRNESS
Big tax-cut savings are not restricted to executives of for-profit companies. Top execs at healthcare nonprofits also make big salaries and therefore benefit from Republican tax law. The 15 highest-paid employees at seven of the nation’s biggest nonprofit healthcare organizations could have collectively saved between three and eight million dollars thanks to the GOP law. (See Methodology.)
NONPROFIT EXECUTIVES ALSO BENEFIT FROM THE 2017 TRUMP-GOP TAX CUTS
SOURCE: AMERICANS FOR TAX FAIRNESS
METHODOLOGY: Public corporations and non-profit organizations regularly report the compensation of their top executives, but individual tax-return data is private. Actual personal tax savings from the lowered individual rates would depend on the filing status and taxable income of each taxpayer in each year. Taxable income in turn depends on deductions, credits and other adjustments to gross income. Tax savings shown here are the maximum possible.