‘The Pitt’ Season 2 Plans to Takeon Trump’s Medicaid Cuts: “You Have To Be Responsible For What You Put Out There”

Noah Wyle is back with executive producers John Wells and R. Scott Gemmill to revisit the state of the healthcare system. They wanted to show how much has changed, and worsened, especially after the pandemic and a wave of misinformation that has led many people to distrust medical experts.

John Wells thinks some of the anger towards healthcare workers comes from not understanding how tough their jobs are. But Wyle and Gemmill believe a bigger problem is “ignorance” coming from “the highest levels” of the U.S. government. Wyle puts it bluntly: “We’re having germ theory debated, for God’s sake. Come on! What are we talking about here? What are we trying to normalize? It’s nuts.”

The first season of “The Pitt” had 15 episodes covering big, hot topics like gun violence, vaccinations, abortion, and drug addiction. All of these stories are told through the eyes of doctors and nurses who see the real impact of these issues every day in their patients.

Wyle explains that the show tries to be realistic and shows all sides of an argument without judging. He says, “You’re not making value judgments. You’re just painting a picture, and if it’s accurate enough and it’s representative enough, it becomes a bit of a Rorschach test. You see what you want to see in it and you draw your own conclusions from it.” If the system looks broken or unfair in the show, “maybe it is.”

The second season will include real-world problems like the treatment of undocumented immigrants, especially after recent ICE raids. R. Scott Gemmill says, “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.”

A big part of Season 2 will focus on the effects of the “Big Beautiful Bill” that President Trump signed last month. This law cuts Medicaid funding by 12 percent. The show’s creators talked to hundreds of medical workers to figure out how these changes will affect hospitals soon.

John Wells explains, “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. … But they’re going to have on-the-ground, immediate consequences in emergency rooms, and nobody’s arguing with that.” He adds that even Republican senators agree this will be a problem.

Wells also points out this isn’t the first time the government has tried to cut healthcare funding. Previous attempts in Arkansas and Georgia didn’t work and were quickly reversed. The show draws on this history to predict what might happen next.

Gemmill says, “When people have less finances from the government to help them with their healthcare, they’re going to get less healthcare, and that means they’re going to end up in the only place where they can get free healthcare, which is the ER.” He warns that emergency rooms will get even busier, pushing a broken system to a crisis point.

This crisis could hit people of color the hardest. Research shows that racial and ethnic backgrounds often affect how much patients trust medical care. The show’s writers include this in their storylines.

Wyle talks about a sad statistic he read, saying being a Black girl in Pittsburgh is “about the hardest life you could have.” This inspired a storyline about a Black woman with sickle cell disease who is not treated properly for her pain. Wyle says, “That’s two real-life statistics being put into a storyline that affects one of our characters, who’s also trying to effect change on a larger scale.”

Wells hopes healthcare workers watching the show will see themselves and think about their own biases. He mentions a story in progress about the challenges deaf patients face in emergency rooms, showing how hard it can be to get proper care when communication fails.

Critics love “The Pitt.” Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 95% approval rating, calling it “a bracingly fresh medical drama.” Metacritic rates it 76 out of 100, saying reviews are “generally favorable.” The show premiered on Max in January 2025 and earned 13 Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series. Season 2 is set to start in January 2026.

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