Massive Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump's megabill will make an appearance in the popular medical drama series "The Pitt," along with the fallout of his immigration crackdown.
The show, set in a Pittsburgh hospital's emergency room, plans to include the impacts of Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill," which slashed Medicaid spending by 12%, Variety reported. The show's creative team has made hundreds of calls to medical professionals to determine the looming effect on hospitals within the next year, according to the report.
“The Medicaid changes are going to have a significant impact, and you don’t have to take a political position to discuss what the impact is actually going to be,” executive producer John Wells told the outlet. “I don’t want to have an argument about whether or not they’re appropriate, what Congress did or didn’t do. But they’re going to have on-the-ground, immediate consequences in emergency rooms, and nobody’s arguing with that. That’s a bipartisan agreement. You’ve got very Republican senators from Missouri like Josh Hawley agreeing that this is going to be a problem.”
Wells noted that Arkansas and Georgia both tried to gut funding for health care. It didn't end well.
"It was frankly — again, not trying to be political, but they were disastrous in the two states [Arkansas and Georgia] that tried it, and they backed out of it and stopped doing it. So, we have a lot of people to call on to ask what’s likely to happen.”
The show will also include storylines involving Trump's mass immigration raids.
“We take our platform very seriously. I think one of the things when you can reach 10 million people — and this was true back in the day on ‘ER’ as well — is with that amount of people listening, you have to be responsible for what you put out there,” fellow executive producer R. Scott Gemmill said.
"The Pitt" follows healthcare professionals performing grueling shifts, in which characters navigate personal and workplace hurdles in a high-stakes setting of critical patient care. The show stars Noah Wyle as Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch.