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Health Impacts of SNAP Provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act

Research Memo: Delivered to House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader John Thune

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On July 2, 2025, LDI Senior Fellow Sameed Khatana, MD, MPH and Nicholas Illenberger, PhD of NYU, wrote a research memo to House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune estimating the impacts related to the SNAP provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. 

The research memo estimates that the loss of SNAP due to provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would result in 93,000 premature deaths between now and 2039.

July 2, 2025

The Honorable Mike Johnson

United States House of Representatives

Washington, DC 20515

CC: The Honorable John Thune

United States Senate

Washington, DC 20510

Dear Speaker Johnson:

We are writing today as experts on the health impacts of SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) to share evidence about the impacts of the SNAP provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill, which the Senate has passed and is now under consideration in the House.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 3.2 million people under 65 will lose SNAP as a result of the bill.1 We have previously researched the impacts of SNAP loss on the health of individuals. For example:

Peer-reviewed research from other investigators has quantified the mortality rate of individuals under age 65 with SNAP as compared to a similar group without SNAP over a fourteen-year period.4 Assuming a similar risk profile as prior SNAP participants, if we apply that estimate to the 3.2 million Americans projected to lose SNAP benefits under the bill, that would result in 93,000 premature deaths due to the loss of SNAP between now and 2039.

We would be happy to answer any questions or discuss our research or this projection with you.

Sincerely,

Sameed Khatana, MD
Assistant Professor of Cardiology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Senior Fellow, Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics
Sameed.Khatana@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Nicholas Illenberger, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Population Health
NYU Grossman School of Medicine
Nicholas.Illenberger@nyulangone.org

This communication represents the views of the researchers and not the institutions for which they work.

  1. “Klobuchar Craig Letter SNAP,” Congressional Budget Office, May 22, 2025, https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2025-05/Klobuchar-Craig-Letter-SNAP_5-22-25.pdf.
  2. Sameed Ahmed M Khatana, Nicolas Illenberger, Rachel M. Werner, Peter W. Groeneveld, and Nandita Mitra, “Changes in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Policies and Diabetes Prevalence: Analysis of Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Data From 2004 to 2014,” Diabetes Care 44, no. 12 (December 2021): 2699–2707, https://doi.org/10.2337/dc21-1203.
  3. Sriya Potluri, Atheendar Venkataramani, Nicholas Illenberger, and Sameed Ahmed Khatana, “The Association of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Related Policies with County-Level Cardiovascular Mortality in the United States,” JACC 85, no. 12 (April 2025): Supplement, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0735-1097(25)00853-8.
  4. Colleen M. Heflin, Samuel J. Ingram, and James P. Ziliak, “The Effect Of The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program On Mortality,” Health Affairs 38, no. 11 (November 2019): 0278-2715, https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2019.00405.

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