| His own trading ban would have taken effect on January 3, 2027, the same day his term ends. |
| LEAD ESSAY / 4 MIN / 2 DOCUMENTS / STORY FILE BRES-MCAID |
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| What would you do if you knew a vote was coming that could hurt a stock you owned? |
| My answer is easy. I’d sell, and if you’re honest, you’d sell too... but you can’t. You don’t sit on a House committee, and you don’t get a vote on the floor. |
| Congressman Rob Bresnahan had both, at least until Tuesday night. He’s the first-term Republican from northeastern Pennsylvania. Voters there replaced him with Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti. She led 55.2% to 44.8% when the Associated Press called the race, the Washington Examiner reported. |
| Let me walk you through how his stock trades became the center of that race... because you helped pay for part of this story. |
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| During the 2024 campaign, Bresnahan called stock trading by members of Congress sickening, and he pledged to ban it. Then he won. Once in office, he made more than 600 trades worth millions of dollars, according to Spotlight PA reporting cited by Raw Story. |
| His explanation never changed. Financial advisers placed the trades, he said, and he didn’t direct them. |
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| ...never instructed my financial advisors on what to buy, sell, or hold. |
| ROB BRESNAHAN, VIA NBC NEWS |
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| Maybe that’s true. But the dates on his own filings still need explaining, and I’ll show you why. So let’s go to the paper. |
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| On May 5, 2025, Bresnahan introduced H.R. 3182, his bill to ban stock trading by members of Congress and their spouses. Ten days later, on May 15, one of his brokerage accounts sold shares of UnitedHealth, Elevance Health and CVS Health. Each of those companies runs Medicaid plans. In plain English, Medicaid is health coverage for low-income families. And your tax dollars pay for it, while private insurers often run it. |
| FILED / HOUSE PERIODIC TRANSACTION REPORT 20030433 |
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| Bresnahan signed this House disclosure on May 31, 2025. It lists May 15 sales of UnitedHealth and Elevance Health stock worth $15,001 to $50,000 apiece, plus CVS Health stock worth $1,001 to $15,000. With a separate Centene sale, NBC News put the total at up to $130,000. |
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| Seven days after those sales, on May 22, the House took its first vote on President Trump’s big tax and spending bill. That bill cut Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion to help pay for tax cuts. And Bresnahan voted for it. |
| Taken together, the four insurers whose stock he sold oversee roughly half of all Medicaid managed care organizations, according to KFF figures that NBC cited. Centene’s shares later fell more than 40% in the weeks after his sale, Quiver Quantitative found. |
| So did he know what was coming? Proving what he knew is a job for investigators. The form, though, proves the order of events. I’ve read it twice... and his signature is on the last page. |
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| Here’s the part that should make you angry. Bresnahan’s own ban wouldn’t have applied to a single member until the first day of the next Congress. Check section 1(c) of the four-page bill text on Congress.gov if you doubt me. Day one of that Congress is January 3, 2027, which is also the day his own term runs out. |
| Even then, the bill would have let members keep every share they owned before taking office. Put simply, the stock he already held would have stayed his. |
| And this is where you come in. Your taxes fund Medicaid, and maybe a parent or a child of yours depends on it. A retirement account like yours can’t sell a week ahead of a vote. But his could, and I suspect that’s the part voters understood. |
| Tuesday’s voters in one Pennsylvania district ended that deal for Bresnahan. Come January, a new Democratic majority decides whether the same deal holds for the rest of the House... and I’ll read every filing when it does. |
