Why Pat Toomey has become a key voice on GOP health bill

WASHINGTON — Within a divided Senate Republican caucus, resistance to the party’s high-stakes health bill has come from Ohio, West Virginia, Maine, and Nevada – states, like Pennsylvania, that have expanded Medicaid to hundreds of thousands of people and seen the grim opioid epidemic up close.
And yet Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey has been one of the bill’s most vocal advocates.

While GOP senators from those other states have decried spending cuts that they say could cost their constituents health coverage and undermine substance-abuse treatment, Toomey has argued that there are no cuts at all in the bill — and has authored a plan to scale back Medicaid even more.

In doing so, Toomey has been one of the most vocal and visible advocates for a controversial bill that could affect health care for millions. He has vouched for the plan repeatedly on national television, including on a sprint through Fox News, Fox Business, MSNBC, and CNBC on Monday. He touted it in a USA Today column and defended the proposal last week in a question-and-answer session televised on several Pennsylvania stations. His critics accuse Toomey of putting conservative ideology ahead of Pennsylvania’s interests, and of threatening health care for hundreds of thousands of constituents.

The senator rejects those predictions and has defended the bill by standing on the themes that have driven much of his public career: a smaller, leaner government.

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