Healthcare attacks at center of campaign for 7th District House seat

The two candidates leading the race to represent New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District agree healthcare must be more affordable and accessible, but they have very different ideas on how to improve the system, especially when it comes to publicly subsidized care.

On the campaign trail, both Rep. Tom Kean Jr (R) and his Democratic challenger, Rebecca Bennett, highlight the ongoing changes to Medicaid, the state- and federal-funded health insurance system that now covers some 1.8 million New Jersey residents and is facing massive cutbacks under President Donald Trump.

Bennett, a first-time candidate and health technology executive, joined a nationwide bus tour calling attention to these cuts Friday in Westfield. The changes could force more than 350,000 people out of NJ Family Care, New Jersey’s Medicaid program, and eventually cost the state more than $3 billion annually in federal hospital funding.

The event was hosted by Sick of It!, a campaign by the nonprofit advocacy group Protect Our Care and focused on the Medicaid cuts and other changes resulting from legislation Trump signed in July 2025 known as the One Big Beautiful Bill.

“Tom Kean Jr. was the deciding vote on the One Big Beautiful Bill, which is why tens of thousands of people in our district are losing access to their health insurance. It’s why all the rest of us are seeing our premiums go up. So No. 1, we’re going to undo those cuts that were in the legislation,” Bennett said Friday.

Healthcare costs remain a concern for a majority of New Jerseyans, according to a recent Rutgers Eagleton Institute of Politics poll. Bennett said it’s one of the biggest worries on voters’ minds and she’s called for creating health insurance options that aren’t tied to people’s jobs.

“I hear these stories day in and day out. I think it’s important that we recognize our healthcare system is not working. It’s broken and we have to fix it,” Bennett said in Westfield.

Kean, who is seeking a third term, has defended his vote to support the changes to Medicaid as necessary to protect the future of public subsidy programs for poor, elderly, and disabled people. He blames insurance companies for denying care to those who deserve treatment.

“Congressman Kean successfully protected Medicare and Medicaid for every single one of its intended beneficiaries in New Jersey. Every New Jersey senior, child, and disabled person can now get every kind of care they need. Under the plan passed last year, Medicare will grow by $1.134 trillion and Medicaid by $273 billion over the next decade,” Kean campaign spokesman Harrison Neely told the New Jersey Monitor.

Neely declined to answer additional questions about the impact of the cuts.

Trump and his allies have noted that Medicaid spending is projected to grow even with the cuts in the bill Trump signed in July 2025. A Congressional Budget Office analysis of the bill’s effects said that projected growth is slower than what was projected before the bill was signed.

The 7th District race has drawn national attention as Republicans worry about their ability to continue to control Congress when its new term begins in January. The seat was in the GOP’s hands for decades until Tom Malinowski won it for Democrats in 2018. Kean flipped it back for Republicans in 2022.

In debates and TV ads, Kean and Republican allies have tried to paint Bennett as a wealthy executive exacerbating healthcare’s problems, alleging she prioritized profits over patients in her work with Midi Health, which connects women with care for menopause-related symptoms using telemedicine. At Midi, Bennett launched a partnership with Lifepoint Health, a hospital system that has been flagged for poor quality control and denial of care.

“Liberal Rebecca Bennett brags about partnering with the same company putting profits over patients,” says one TV ad from Kean’s campaign.

Bennett frames her work with Midi and Oshi Health, which seeks to link patients with gastrointestinal care, as her way of helping people, a focus on service she connects to her 15 years as a Navy helicopter pilot. Women’s health is also a passion for her, Bennett said Friday.

Carly Jones, a spokesperson for the Democrat, said Bennett is the only candidate focused on lowering healthcare costs.

“In Congress, she’ll reverse healthcare cuts and take on pharmaceutical companies that are jacking up the price of lifesaving medicine for New Jerseyans,” Jones said.

Micah Rasmussen, director of Rider University’s Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics, said it’s hard for voters to form an opinion about Bennett’s work with Midi based on the GOP attacks, but “she had a pretty good answer” to those charges in framing it as work to help people navigate a broken system.

While Medicaid cuts have been paramount in the campaign, the biggest changes don’t take effect for several more years.

“We know that some of those impacts were end-loaded not to take effect until after the election, so that people aren’t feeling it as they go to the polls this year,” Rasmussen said.

The biggest issue in the 7th District may not be either Kean or Bennett, but Trump, Rasmussen said.

“In a nationalized midterm environment where voters are really thinking along the lines of either two more years of Trump or checking and balancing Trump, the main motivating factor of most voters is either to give him more runway, or to take the runway away from him,” he said.