Healthcare for All

Every American deserves excellent, affordable, and accessible healthcare.

As our US Representative of Pennsylvania’s 13th Congressional District, I pledge to:

• Enshrine into federal law a national healthcare program so that all of our treatments and preventative care are covered, no matter our age, employment status, sex, gender expression, pre-existing condition, economic status, marital status, race, color, creed, religion, political party, or education level.
• Expand the footprint of quality licensed healthcare, including maternity care, especially in rural areas.
• Impeach directors of the US Department of Health and Human Services who do not support evidence-based science.

For the newborn to the elderly, for those suffering pre-existing conditions to the newly-diagnosed, for those simply needing annual physicals to those requiring hospital stays, healthcare, rooted in evidence-based science, is essential to advancing survival and increased quality of life. 

In every other developed country, citizens have such universal healthcare programs that cover their medical needs, but in America we do not.¹ Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act have attempted to fill gaps of inequity, but those safety nets are frequently targeted by Republicans who falsely claim to offer alternatives, but offer nothing of substance.²

In Pennsylvania’s 13th Congressional District (PA-13), 160,000 residents rely on Medicaid benefits and 194,000 residents rely on Medicare benefits. In July 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act which removes Medicaid from 12 million Americans was signed into law. This means that over 17,000 PA-13 residents will lose Medicaid and several others will experience dramatically rising Affordable Care Act (Pennie, ACA) premiums that will no longer be subsidized.³ It also means that once this bill increases our national deficit to a critical level sequestration will be triggered and Medicare coverage will be cut by $536 billion by 2034.⁴ Our current US Representative, multimillionaire John Joyce, voted not once, but twice, for this bill to pass.

Kaiser Family Foundation, a leader in US healthcare, has crunched the numbers and delivered sobering statistics.

“More than 22 million people receive the subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year… Losing the subsidies could mean that average out-of-pocket premium payments could double in 2026, from $888 a year to $1,904, an earlier KFF analysis found.” Yet, a majority of Trump supporters supported these subsidies.⁵ Unfortunately, the Republican-controlled Congress refused to reinstate the subsidies in a continuing resolutions bill, so the increases are likely to go through in 2026 unless a new vote is taken on this issue in 2025.⁶

Meanwhile,  Americans whose wages put them above the Federal Poverty Line, but whose employers don’t offer healthcare benefits are still strapped by significant medical expenses whenever they suffer a health crisis or seek preventative routine care. According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, “medical debt has become a leading cause of personal bankruptcy, with an estimated $88 billion of that debt in collections nationwide.”⁷ If the United States had a national healthcare program, Americans would have access to preventative care, staving off crises, and many of those personal bankruptcies might have been avoided.

Additionally, Americans are unduly burdened by trying to understand what care they can receive and/or afford in a confusing patchwork of healthcare services from urban state-of-the-art hospitals to rural healthcare centers that by turns unpredictably reward or punish those who dare to move across state or even county lines. 

This is most evident in GoodRx map that depicts the number of healthcare deserts -“…areas that lack adequate access to and infrastructure for healthcare services” – by county. In PA-13, Adams, Bedford, Fulton, Huntingdon, Juniata, and Perry counties are noted as having as few as one (Bedford) and as many as 5 (Perry) healthcare deserts.⁸

In 2023, PA-13’s Juniata County was named one of five counties considered a “maternal health desert” ⁹ which are counties “…where maternity care services—like prenatal doctor visits, screenings for preeclampsia and other pregnancy complications, and hospitals or clinics with birth centers—are limited or nonexistent.” In Perry county there are currently only 3 pharmacies for a population of over 46k people, nor do residents have a local hospital or an urgent care.

In Franklin County, Wellspan Chambersburg Hospital stopped admitting pediatric patients in December 2023 and transferred their pediatric staff elsewhere, while Wellspan Waynesboro Hospital already didn’t admit pediatric patients. 

In other words, children in Franklin county who need ongoing care must seek it in another county of Pennsylvania or across the state line into Maryland. Our current US Representative, John Joyce, frequently announces his support for Community Healthcare Centers which provide basic services for rural residents, but many PA-13 mothers and children need far more healthcare than a few stitches or flu testing.

The expansion of Medicaid that provided children and families with healthcare throughout the pandemic ended in 2023. Through June 2025, over 6 million American children have been dropped from Medicaid. “Last April, Pennsylvania Department of Human Services Secretary Dr. Valerie Arkoosh told PBS-affiliate WHYY that 75,000 of those kicked off Medicaid were able to obtain insurance through Pennie, the state’s Affordable Care Act marketplace.” ¹⁰ Unfortunately, with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminating subsidies to make ACA premiums affordable, many of those same children may be dropped again. If we had a national healthcare program, all of these children would be covered.

Lastly, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who is the director of the US Department of Health and Human Services, is considered a danger to public health by nine former Center for Disease Control staffers. “Nine former leaders of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have spoken out against Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, publishing an open letter that criticises his policies – including restricting vaccines, pulling funding for research, and firing thousands of healthcare workers.” If we continue to allow unserious people to lead our nation in health programs that are not rooted in evidence-based science, we risk the health of our nation. ¹¹

Please vote for me, Beth Farnham, so Congress can improve the health and wallets of Everyday Americans.

1. Countries with Universal Healthcare ↩︎
2. Republicans Have Stopped Pretending About Healthcare ↩︎
3. One Big Beautiful Bill Act Impact on PA ↩︎
4. Trump’s Big Ugly Law Triggers $536 billion in Medicare Cuts ↩︎
5. A majority of Trump supporters back extending Obamacare subsidies, poll finds ↩︎
6. The shutdown deal doesn’t extend expiring health subsidies. What happens to them now? ↩︎
7. CFPB Estimates $88 Billion in Medical Bills on Credit Reports ↩︎
8. Mapping Healthcare Deserts: Over 80% of the Country Still Lacks Adequate Access to Healthcare ↩︎
9. Expecting the unexpected: 193,000 women live in maternity deserts across PA ↩︎
10. Pennsylvania Removes 600,000 People From Health Care Plan ↩︎
11. RFK Jr ‘endangering’ Americans, say former CDC bosses ↩︎