17M Americans Are at Risk of Losing Their Healthcare Under New Republican Tax Bill — That’s Breaking Insurance Stocks

Politicians are playing doctor with America’s health programs, and investors are feeling the pain. Healthcare insurers are experiencing their worst nightmare as the GOP’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” threatens to strip coverage from 17M Americans. As this reality set in, private insurers — which offer a large number of Medicare and Medicaid-adjacent plans — hemorrhaged on Wall Street:

• On Wednesday, insurers like CenteneCNC
  , Molina HealthcareMOH
  , and Oscar HealthOSCR
  took a beating on Wall Street — falling 40%, 22%, and 18% respectively.
• Even healthcare giants weren’t spared — UnitedHealth GroupUNH
  slipped 5.7%, while CVS HealthCVS
  and CignaCI
  fell 4.2% and 4%, respectively.

The prognosis looks grim: The tax bill’s changes would accelerate Medicare and Social Security trust fund depletion from early 2033 to late 2032, potentially triggering automatic benefit cuts of 24% for Social Security recipients. Meanwhile, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is launching WISeR, an AI-powered prior authorization system targeting what it calls “wasteful” procedures — estimated to cost Medicare up to $5.8B annually. Harvard’s Ben Sommers noted, “Politically, it can be tricky if people don’t recognize they have Medicaid and they’re trying to weigh in on policies that affect Medicaid.”