Scott Perry doesn’t believe work policy will cost constituents Medicaid access

Republican Congressman Scott Perry claimed that those who truly require coverage won’t lose it, but work restrictions may kick millions of Americans off of Medicaid.  

Prior to casting the deciding vote to cut Medicaid by $800 billion last week, Republican US Congressman Scott Perry (R-York) claimed that those who need Medicaid will still have access to it for health care coverage.

However, that’s not necessarily true if the US Senate approves President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” as-is.

Perry was confronted on NewsNation’s “Sunday with Chris Stirewalt” in March about his support to cut Medicaid. 

Stirewalt explained that in 2024 there was only $31 billion in fraudulent Medicaid payments, and asked Perry if he could guarantee no one would lose their health care coverage over the potential Medicaid cuts. 

“ I think what we can promise is that no one that is legitimately on Medicaid will lose their coverage,” Perry responded. 

He went on to state that Republicans are looking to remove undocumented immigrants from the Medicaid program, but the Kaiser Family Foundation highlights that undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program. 

Millions of Americans, instead, are at risk of losing  health care coverage because of the Medicaid work requirements in the budget bill, according to the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities.

The office  explains that states will be required to deny coverage to people applying for Medicaid if they are not working at least 80 hours a month and drop people from the program if they’re unable to document that they are meeting those work requirements. 

“[Republicans] are going to require people to prove that they’re eligible every six months. That’s going to be draconian at best and it’s going to be a real problem, frankly, for providers but certainly for families to have to recertify their Medicaid eligibility every six months,” Matthew Yarnell, President of SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, told The Keystone in an interview.

Yarnell added, “At the same time you’re seeing massive cuts to the federal workforce. So I don’t even know how people are going to get their stuff approved. I think I would be concerned about their talking points saying that people are not gonna have disruptions to their services.”

Data for Progress, a progressive-leaning polling firm, found that cutting Medicaid is extremely unpopular in Perry’s district with only 9% of voters supporting the measure. 

Over 100 of Perry’s constituents visited his Mechanicsburg office on Wednesday to hand deliver Perry letters about his Medicaid cuts. Perry hasn’t held an in-person town hall meeting in his district since July, 2019.

The Center for American Progress estimates that over 340,000 Pennsylvanians are at risk of losing their health care coverage, including over 20,000 residents living in Perry’s district. 

Susan Roller, a retired teacher and Cumberland County resident, helped organize Wednesday’s action at Perry’s office and explained that she isn’t  buying his statements on people keeping their Medicaid coverage. 

“ I think it’s a good example of Mr. Perry’s misinformation, lack of knowledge, lack of understanding, and deliberate distortion of the truth,” Roller told The Keystone.