JUST READING the Big Beautiful Bill, with its 330 pages of provisions, is an intimidating undertaking. Working out its consequences is yet more challenging. Nevertheless, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the Yale School of Public Health tried to calculate how many more people would die as a result of the law. Analysing the House of Representatives’ version of the bill, they came to 42,500 annually by 2034. That is more people than currently die of breast cancer. Adding in the impact of the end of the enhanced subsidies for people buying their own insurance, they reckoned there would be over 51,000 extra deaths a year. The White House has pushed back on the claims of deaths, calling them “egregious” and “deranged”.