WASHINGTON— A week before he voted to significantly cut Medicaid, Rep. Rob Bresnahan dumped six figures’ worth of stock in a quartet of companies that manage nearly half of all Medicaid enrollees in the country, according to public disclosure documents reviewed by NBC News.
Bresnahan, R-Pa., who became one of the most prolific stock traders in Congress after he took office this year, offloaded up to $130,000 worth of stock in Centene, Elevance Health, UnitedHealth and CVS Health on May 15, the periodic transaction reports he filed with the House clerk in June show. Taken together, those four companies oversee roughly half of all Medicaid managed care organizations, according to the KFF, a health policy research organization.
Seven days later, on May 22, the House took its first vote on President Donald Trump’s mega bill, which slashed funding for Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion to help pay for tax cuts. Bresnahan, along with all but two House Republicans, voted in favor of the bill, which ultimately passed both chambers of Congress and became law this summer.
While Bresnahan has come under intense scrutiny for his stock trades, including for offloading the Centene stock, which was worth up to $15,000, the full breadth of his Medicaid-related trades ahead of his vote for Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” has not previously been reported.
In a statement to NBC News, Bresnahan said he “never instructed my financial advisors on what to buy, sell, or hold.”
“It is no secret that I built a successful career before serving, and I am beholden to no lobbyist or special interest,” he said.
Just before he sold the Medicaid-related stocks, Bresnahan introduced legislation on May 6 to ban congressional stock trading and announced he was moving his holdings into a blind trust. The most recent reported trade of Bresnahan’s stock occurred on Sept. 15, according to Capitol Trades, a website dedicated to tracking lawmakers’ stock activity. He still ranks as the seventh-biggest trader in Congress by number of trades, according to the website.
Bresnahan said in his statement to NBC News that the blind trust process, generally, is “not suited for the realities of today,” and he called for allowing members who hold simple 401(k)-style individual investments to transition those assets into exchange-traded funds or mutual funds.
“A genuine and workable reform would give Members, many of whom had successful careers before entering public service, a clear pathway to move individual holdings into widely accepted and diversified investment products,” he said. “My goal is simple: real transparency, real accountability, and rules that actually make sense.”
The disclosures about Bresnahan’s Medicaid-related trades could add fuel to ongoing efforts to ban congressional stock trading, with the House holding its first major hearing on the issue Wednesday.
“Part of the fact-finding is what members have done in terms of trading, sometimes on a daily basis,” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., said at a news conference ahead of the hearing.
Members of Congress are required to publicly disclose stock trades in a timely fashion (as Bresnahan did). Members of both parties have been criticized for their trades in recent years, which has created new momentum on Capitol Hill to ban trading by members. The idea is also widely popular with the public, but Congress has been resistant in the past.
While it’s already illegal for lawmakers to use nonpublic information to make stock trades, proponents of a stock trade ban argue there are inherent conflicts of interest in members’ making legislative and oversight decisions that might affect companies they have financial stakes in.
“This body has been enriching itself on the taxpayers’ dime for too daggum long, and it’s got to stop. This place is as crooked as a dog’s leg,” Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said at a news conference before the hearing. “Let’s quit with this nonsense. Let’s give America a reason to trust Congress for once in our miserable lives.”
But critics of a ban say it’s complicated: Do they also ban spouses or staff members from trading stocks? What if a lawmaker inherits stock from a relative while in office? There’s also concern that a ban could discourage people from seeking office, since lawmakers haven’t had a pay raise since 2009 and maintaining dual residences in Washington and their districts can be expensive.
“How do we not throw the baby out with the bathwater?” Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., asked witnesses at the hearing.
The House Administration Committee’s hearing to explore policies to restrict congressional stock trading is seen as a first step toward possible legislative action.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., is threatening to move ahead with a discharge petition to force a floor vote on a ban if she doesn’t believe leadership is making serious progress on the issue.
