“The People of Steuben County need your help”
Legislators Ferratella, Tobia, and Lando co-sign letter citing “very serious concerns”
August 6, 2025
Hon. Donald J. Trump
President of the United States
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington D.C. 20500
Dear President Trump:
We write to you as concerned County Legislators for Steuben County in New York State.
On July 4, 2025, you signed into law the Big Beautiful Bill. This bill offers a number of tax cuts, tax incentives, and various other items to aid the American people throughout our country, such as increased child tax credit, senior tax deduction, and savings accounts for kids, just to name a few. However, with deep cuts to health care, Medicaid, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), we have some very serious concerns on how this will negatively impact and affect our people throughout our state and here in Steuben County. We are hoping you will reconsider and make some needed changes to the bill to help the people of this county who may be so badly affected by the cuts included in this bill.
Nationally, the Big Beautiful Bill aims to cut Medicaid $1.02 trillion over 10 years and cut SNAP 186 billion over 10 years. An estimated 17 million people in the United States may lose health coverage with your cuts in healthcare. In New York State, where roughly 7.5 million residents rely on Medicaid, 1.3 million are expected to lose coverage due to new eligibility and verification hurdles. Medicaid is the single largest payer for U.S. mental health services.
More than 60 percent of New Yorkers receiving mental health services are enrolled in Medicaid.
Steuben County alone has 32,000 people who receive some type of Medicaid coverage and will be at risk at losing their Medicaid benefits that they so badly need. Statewide, more than 300,000 households are expected to lose some/all SNAP benefits, with an average loss of $220 per household per month, totaling more than $800 million. This will no doubt affect our over 12,000 families/individuals who receive these food benefits in Steuben County.
SNAP helps low-income working people, senior citizens, the disabled and others feed their families. Healthcare cuts will have a severe negative impact to New York State and all counties. Over $8 billion will be lost to New York Hospitals and healthcare systems with 34,000 hospital jobs and 29,000 health supplier jobs projected to be eliminated statewide.
In Steuben County, we have small rural hospitals that rely heavily on Medicaid payments that will be at risk of closing their doors. Hospitals that survive the cuts will experience many additional problems such 9-1-1 systems being overburdened, wait times will increase during system peaks leading to increased emergency services costs for counties and other localities.
We need your help, Mr. President, to help eliminate some of the major problems that this bill will bring to our county.
New York State, and its counties, will not have the money and resources to help their people out due to the very high costs this bill will have. Combined fiscal impact for New York State: $14 billion annually. Cuts in federal share of SNAP administrative costs result in additional $36 million in annual costs to the state, and increased costs for counties and New York City by roughly $168 million annually. Delayed infrastructure projects, reduced disaster preparedness, service gaps, expanded administrative responsibilities to enforce and verify eligibility across federal programs will cost additional billions of dollars.
Thank you, Mr. President, for your assistance to this very serious matter. The people of Steuben County need your help and should never have to worry about health coverage, receiving appropriate medical assistance, and putting food on their tables. We are a proud county that takes pride in the people that are here and truly appreciate the beautiful part of the country where we live. We trust that you will make swift and decisive actions to take the necessary changes that will help the people of Steuben County continue to live their lives in good health.
