Republican Patti Adair endorsed cutting Medicaid, repealing Obamacare

Republican Patti Adair is running for Congress on a message of affordability and cutting costs, even though she backed a Trump administration policy that will kick up to 12 million Americans off Medicaid.

Adair is challenging Democratic Rep. Janelle Bynum in Oregon’s 5th District. She has served as a Deschutes County commissioner since 2019.

In June 2025, Adair’s X account shared posts from Republican Sens. Markwayne Mullin and Rick Scott touting the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), the sweeping tax law already being called the signature policy achievement of President Donald Trump’s second term.

The law extends tax cuts for wealthy individuals by making massive reductions in federal spending. This includes a $1 trillion cut to Medicaid, the program that provides health insurance to low-income Americans, including 206,000 of Adair’s would-be constituents.

Scott’s post suggested that Medicaid is rife with fraud and that kicking people off the program will fix it. This contradicts multiple analyses that have found almost all Medicaid fraud is committed by health care providers and contractors, not enrollees.

The cuts are also expected to hurt rural hospitals and health care providers that receive much of their revenue through Medicaid reimbursements. In total, five facilities in Oregon’s 5th District are expected to lose $55 million in revenue over the next 10 years. This includes nearly $23 million less for the St. Charles Medical Center in Bend.

OBBB also allowed tax credits that lower the cost of Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) plans to expire. The House Joint Economic Committee projects that 26,500 people in Adair’s district will lose health coverage from the combined effects of the Medicaid cuts and the credits ending.

Adair previously called for eliminating Obamacare entirely. She wrote in a 2017 X post, “#repeal Obamacare. Now. Now. Now.”

The spending cuts in OBBB go far beyond health care. The law also slashes $186 billion from SNAP, the program that helps more than 42 million Americans buy groceries.

Bynum voted against OBBB and has called for protecting Medicaid on her campaign website.

“No person should be a medical emergency away from bankruptcy, but sadly that happens all too often in our country,” the site says. “We need Congress to act—and that starts with protecting Medicare, expanding Medicaid, and lowering the cost of prescription drug prices.”

Adair is a longtime Trump ally and served as a delegate to his 2016 presidential campaign.