President Donald Trump wants to deport 1 million immigrants from the United States every yearAnd in typical rich man -style he throws money to the problem.
Trump’s ‘Big, beautiful account’ A huge spending package signed by law on July 4, 2025wit $ 150 billion for enforcement of immigration in the next four years. About half of that goes directly to immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) To detect, hold and remove migrants, asylum seekers and old US immigrant residents
That sum is amazing; To be honest, it is difficult for us, non-millionaires to imagine that they spend so much money. On average, households are in the middle of earning in the US Spend almost $ 9,000 on groceries per year. Childcare is one of the biggest editions in my household; But it doesn’t help millions, much less $ 150 billion.
To unpack how much cash Trump has transferred for armed security forces, I called a number man: Graham Gardner, a health care economist at Texas Christian University That specializes in reproductive health financing. I asked him: “Where could the government pay more with $ 150 billion instead of mass expulsion?”
Gardner was a game to participate in my thought experiment. This is what his math shows.
1. Open each closed national hospital again and perform them for 12 years
Between 2005 and 2023, 146 rural hospitals were closed, according to the most recent US Department of Agriculture Data. Some remain open as outpatient wound treatment centers, bare health clinics, or stand -alone emergency roomsBut 81 are completely eliminated.
“These closures are almost always budget -related,” Gardner told me.
The average total costs of national hospitals in national are around $ 80 million per year, according to available data from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform.
“My mathematical back-of-the-envelope shows that $ 150 billion could pay to reopen all 146 closed national hospitals in the United States and exploit them for 12 years,” Gardner said.
The same instead Solid spending package which handed $ 150 billion to enforcement of immigration will reduce the expenditure on Medicaid with more than $ 900 billion In the following decade, an estimated 11.8 million people caused To lose their health insurance. Despite a few cuts in the account intended as a lifeline for rural hospitals, Experts expect that many more will close.
2. Keep the pregnancy departments open and manned for 24 hours
When brackishing hospitals are struggling to keep their doors open, labor and delivery departments are among the first services that are being closed.
Medicaid pays for 40 percent of births rural and 50 percent in rural areas, Data from the Government Accountability Office appears. Yet “medicaid fees are often just too low to pay for labor and delivery departments, which are very expensive to walk,” said Gardner. “They need 24-hour staff and teams from specialists.”
This applies in both national and urban areas.
Between 2011 and 2021, the Obstetrics -units of 267 Hospitals in the US are closed. This is where pregnant patients and people receive care in delivery, and most obstetrics that were mainly closed, mainly served black patients, University of Texas-Health Research shows. These closures have created enormous deserts for pregnancy care; More than 2 million women of reproductive age Do not live near a birth facility or a midwife.
In 2023, Lage Medicaid fees cost Hospitals $ 27.5 billion, according to the American Hospital AssociationA lobby in health care. That means that $ 150 billion could cover the entire Medicaid deficiency for at least five years, calculated Gardner.
Among other things, for the medicaid deficiency of the nation instead of increasing the enforcement of immigration “can” help with keeping pregnancy departments open, which guarantees faster access to life-saving services during pregnancy and birth, “he said.
“It is not necessarily the case that throwing dollars will solve our health crisis for mothers,” Gardner said, referring to the fact that pregnancy and delivery are more deadly in the US than in almost any other rich country. “But in a world where medicaid and social services are reduced and financing for scientific research dries up, I cannot imagine that these results improve.”
3. Fund Planned Parenthood for 75 years
The Trump administration has tried to strengthen the financing of Planned Parenthood by preventing Medicaid to repay visits to his clinics, although a judge blocked the cutbacks on July 28, 2025.
The national non-profit health organizations Total annual income Was for the financial year 2023-2024 $ 2 billionby 2024 Annual report. That means that $ 150 billion “could finance all planned parental activities for 75 years,” said Gardner.
Planned Parenthood is a target of conservative anger because it offers abortion care in states where abortion remains legal. (Sidebar: Abortion care made up for only about 4 percent of the services provided by Planned Parenthood in the tax year 2023-2024; Usually it offers routine reproductive and preventive health care – from smears and breast investigations to contraception.)
4. Screen 40 million people every year on breast cancer for breast cancer
Speaking of preventive care, $ 150 billion could cover a lot, Gardner told me.
The money that goes to immigration enforcement during Trump’s second term can pay for everyone instead 40 million mammograms performed in the US every year To detect breast cancer, For about $ 360 eachFor the next decade. Or it could roughly finance it 50 million annual smears Providers perform to screen on HPV and signs of cervical cancer (With around $ 195 per test” Depending on the insurance coverage) for the next 15 years.
Many patients could soon want them to have part of cash in their pockets to pay for this kind of medical services. Experts warn that the coverage for mammograms, smears and other preventive care are in danger now that secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of health and human services says he is “revision’The members of a federal task force who dictates for which preventive care services insurers must pay.
Bottom Line: Government budgets ‘Involve considerations’
Full disclosure: this is fast and dirty math.
Gardner carefully investigated his calculations, and Rewire News Group Checked them. However, we have not carried out a complicated budgeting process, taking into account every income flow, the interest payment of the debt and the economic externality. Government and hospital budgets are a complicated company.
But that does not change the math of Stark Reality Gardner.
“Budgets from the government concern inherent considerations,” he told me. “And worried citizens have to think about where our money is going and how it could possibly be used better.”
Note of the editors: A title in this story has been corrected to accurately show how long closed rural hospitals can run at $ 150 billion.
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