🩺 Patronis defends Medicaid limits amid CBO warnings
🚧 Border crossings hit record lows in 2025
📜 Epstein records transparency petition stalls in Congress
When Mid Bay News interviewed U.S. Rep. Jimmy Patronis earlier last month, the conversation was brief — cut short by pending votes in the House.
After the interview, Mid Bay News sent a series of follow-up questions seeking clarification on Patronis’s stances on healthcare, immigration enforcement, and congressional transparency.
His office declined to provide additional answers, directing Mid Bay News to review statements he had made in interviews with other outlets instead.
The first question that how Patronis would reconcile supporters’ claims that the “One Big Beautiful Bill” restores freedom of choice with critics’ warnings from the Congressional Budget Office that it could leave 10 million Americans uninsured and add $3.4 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years.
In a July interview with WEAR Channel 3 News in Pensacola, Patronis defended Florida’s decision not to expand Medicaid, stating that the program must remain focused on “seniors, disabled, women, children.”
He argued that unchecked “waste, fraud, and abuse” threatens its long-term viability.
“If we don’t tighten up the efficiency, if we don’t take the waste, fraud and abuse off the table, be a little tougher on how those Medicaid dollars are being distributed, the day is going to come where Medicaid is going to really struggle to provide that necessary safety net,” Patronis said.
When challenged with CBO projections that millions could lose coverage, Patronis said hospitals are legally required to treat patients regardless of their insurance status.
“There’s not a single individual anywhere in the United States that is not going to get any health care access right now, every hospital … if you walk into there with absolutely zero health care, that hospital has to treat you,” he said
What Patronis said only covers emergency medical situations.
Under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), hospitals that accept Medicare funds are required to provide a medical screening exam to anyone who presents to their emergency department, regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay.
If the person has an emergency medical condition, the hospital can only provide stabilizing treatment or transfer the patient to another facility that can offer more care.
Once stabilized, hospitals are not required to provide any further non-emergency or long-term treatment to uninsured patients. Furthermore, hospitals can bill patients for services, and even with insurance, a lack of coverage can still result in individuals incurring severe medical debt.
Patronis also pointed to lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, saying hospitals’ reliance on elective surgeries for revenue was “a wake-up call” that exposed inefficiencies in the system.
Patronis has repeatedly pointed to steep drops in migrant crossings as evidence that Trump administration policies are working.
In an April interview with Breitbart News Daily, he stated that the number of crossings had fallen from 137,000 in “last March” to “a little over 7,000” this past March, declaring, “We’re taking back our borders, taking back our country one day at a time.”
The data does show that migrant apprehensions have reached historic lows in 2025.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported about 7,180 migrant arrests in March 2025, the lowest monthly total on record at the Southwest border, compared with more than 137,000 a year earlier.
CBP has continued to report unusually low levels throughout 2025, with 8,024 apprehensions nationwide in June and just over 6,000 at the Southwest border that same month, numbers more than 90% below peaks under the Biden administration.
Patronis’s interview also failed to answer any criticism that says the Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement violates human rights and due process.
Mid Bay News’ final question for Patronis was his decision not to join his Republican colleagues, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Nancy Mace (R-SC), and Lauren Boebert (R-CO), in signing a petition to force a vote on the release of sealed records related to Jeffrey Epstein.
Within Congress, a growing faction of Republicans has pushed for forced disclosure. Rep. Massie filed a discharge petition, a procedural tool that can compel a floor vote if it gathers 218 signatures.
As of early October, only four Republicans had signed it, along with every Democrat in the House of Representatives.
In late September, Adelita Grijavala (D-AZ) won a special election in Arizona’s 7th Congressional District.
Grijavala, along with newly elected Democratic Rep. James Walkinshaw, won his special election in Virginia’s 11th District earlier that month, which would give Massie the signatures he needed to force a vote on the House floor.
In a September interview on NewsNation’s The Hill, Patronis characterized the congressional deadlock over the files as “silly” and said he favors transparency.
“I’ve always been a big advocate in public service of full transparency. If the documents are there, release whatever you got,” he said. “It’s kind of silly that we’re talking about a dead pedophile that is literally from the grave controlling Congress.”
Patronis added that the possibility of Ghislaine Maxwell receiving a pardon from the Trump Administration would be “an incredible gift” and questioned whether Maxwell, who is appealing her conviction, should even be considered clemency.
Polling shows overwhelming public interest in transparency: a July 2025 Economist/YouGov survey found 83% of Trump’s 2024 voters supported full disclosure of Epstein-related files.
During the NewsNation interview, Patronis failed to provide a reason for not joining his Republican colleagues.
With a U.S. Senate vote failing to garner the necessary numbers to pass a short-term spending bill to fund the government, the United States entered its 11th shutdown in history — and its fourth within the past 11 years.
On Sept. 19, Patronis joined all of his Republican colleagues in supporting H.R. 5371, a House-passed continuing resolution designed to fund the government temporarily while broader budget talks continued.
The measure was sent to the Senate for consideration but failed on September 30 in a 53-47 vote, leading to a lapse in federal appropriations at 12:01 a.m. on October 1.
As of Monday, the shutdown has lasted six days, forcing thousands of federal employees to go without pay and suspending non-essential government services nationwide.
Mid Bay News reached out to Patronis’s office on Sept. 29, seeking comment on the pending shutdown. The request was denied, and his office referred all inquiries to his X (formerly Twitter) account.
Since the funding lapse began, Patronis has posted 12 times about the situation — repeatedly referring to it as the “#SchumerShutdown.”
Both parties have since traded accusations over who is responsible for the funding lapse.
Republicans, including Patronis, have claimed Democrats “shut down the government to fund free health care for illegal immigrants.”
That talking point asserts that Democrats demanded new spending to expand health benefits to undocumented immigrants.
However, independent fact-checkers found that claim to be misleading.
According to FactCheck.org, Democratic proposals sought to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies and reverse Medicaid cuts for lawfully enrolled citizens, not to expand full health-care access to undocumented immigrants.
The only relevant provision under discussion involved emergency Medicaid reimbursements for hospitals treating critically ill undocumented patients, a small and long-existing expenditure permitted under federal law.
On Monday, Patronis penned a letter to the Capitol’s Chief Administrative Officer, requesting that his pay be withheld until the shutdown is over.
Under federal law, congressional salaries are classified as mandatory spending — meaning pay continues even during a shutdown unless Congress enacts new legislation to suspend it.
According to House financial disclosures, Patronis has a reported net worth of $8.2 million, primarily from his restaurant business, and earns an annual congressional salary of $174,000.
According to Florida’s Great Northwest, there are over 56,070 military personnel and civilian employees that work at the six military installations in our area.
Over the course of the current shutdown, the Pensacola News Journal estimates that 25,000 federal employees were at risk due to the shutdown.
Pro Communi Bono
St. Francis De Sales, Ora Pro Nobis!
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