{"id":63801,"date":"2025-12-17T23:50:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T23:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/63801\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T23:50:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T23:50:10","slug":"pennsylvania-gop-reps-buck-party-on-health-care-subsidies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/63801\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania GOP Reps buck party on health care subsidies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although he voted for<\/a> the first iteration of the bill, which cut funding for Medicaid and Medicare, Fitzpatrick ultimately voted against<\/a> it a few months later. Mackenzie and Bresnahan, however, did vote for its ultimate passage, which their opponents have been quick to jump on.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cRob Bresnahan unleashed a health care crisis on Northeastern Pennsylvania by voting for the largest cuts to Medicaid in history, stripping funding from our rural hospitals, and failing to take meaningful action in time to prevent health care costs from skyrocketing for Northeastern Pennsylvanians next month,\u201d Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti said in a statement.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cRyan Mackenzie\u2019s eleventh hour attempt to paper over his own record of gutting health care and jacking up costs is like an arsonist calling the fire department after he already lit the match,\u201d said firefighter Bob Brooks, who is running to replace Mackenzie. \u201cHardworking people all across the Lehigh Valley are struggling with rising prices and a health care crisis that Mackenzie unleashed when he voted for Trump\u2019s so-called \u2018Big Beautiful Bill.\u2019\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Neither Fitzpatrick nor Bresnahan responded to WHYY News\u2019 requests for comment, but Mackenzie replied with a statement in which he called the health care crisis \u201ca serious issue with real-world consequences\u201d and said \u201cwe must find commonsense, bipartisan solutions to protect access to health insurance for families in the Lehigh Valley and the Poconos.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

Mackenzie\u2019s office pushed back on the characterization that the congressman waited until \u201cthe 11th hour,\u201d arguing he has spent several months working with members on both sides of the aisle to find a bipartisan compromise. They also pointed out that Mackenzie participated in a televised town hall in September, during which he discussed the impending health care crisis<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

Sans bipartisan compromise, Mackenzie called the three-year extension \u201cthe only remaining option.\u201d He further blamed Democrats for failing to sign onto his efforts for compromise that would include \u201clonger-term reforms that reduce costs.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Affordable Care Act remains broken, and our health care system is in urgent need of reforms that improve transparency, expand choice, and reduce costs,\u201d he said. \u201cSupporting this discharge petition is currently the only way to keep discussions about bipartisan reforms alive.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Harvie disputes that contention and that the \u201cso-called problem solvers\u201d among the Republican Party have their constituents\u2019 best interests at heart.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Republican party\u2019s been trying to kill the Affordable Care Act since it was originally passed, and I think this is just another step of what they\u2019re trying to do and they\u2019re trying to make it look like they\u2019re not doing it,\u201d he said. \u201cDemocrats have been fighting for people to have access to health care access that really is meaningful to expand health care opportunities for people.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although he voted for the first iteration of the bill, which cut funding for Medicaid and Medicare, Fitzpatrick…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5892,32545,28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-63801","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-affordable-care-act","9":"tag-brian-fitzpatrick","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","12":"tag-pennsylvania-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}