Schreiber ally attacks rural healthcare

By Representative John Fitzpatrick

Published in the Seeley Swan Pathfinder

January 29, 2026

Americans for Prosperity, a dark money group from Virginia, is working to elect California transplant “Tax-Hike” Trish Schreiber. It recently sent out an attack mailer in several legislative districts in Montana claiming that legislators who supported the continuation of the Medicaid program in Montana were doing Obama’s bidding. That is utter nonsense. Those legislators, and I am one of them, supported the continuation of Medicaid to protect the health care of 210,000 Montanans.

Everything AFP said in that card is a lie. Montana, like 17 other Republican states voted to continue Medicaid, a federal health care program for the disadvantaged and poor. Our Medicaid statute is one of the most conservative in the nation with work requirements, an expectation of personal responsibility, and frequent reassessment of eligibility to ensure that those on the program are truly needy. It is a model that other conservative states have followed and many of the concepts from our Medicaid program made their way into the Big Beautiful Bill, a bill AFP supported.

I supported the continuation of Medicaid for two reasons.

First, HD 76 is a working class and agricultural district and is much less prosperous than other areas of Montana. It is also a district with a very high percentage of elderly. Thousands of people in the district depend on Medicare and Medicaid for health care. AFP and “Tax-Hike” Schreiber don’t care about those people but, I do and I didn’t go to Helena to deny them access to health care.

Second, the hospitals which serve the district are heavily reliant on Medicaid payments to sustain operations. Medicaid expansion supplies 30% of the income to the hospitals in Anaconda, Deer Lodge and Philipsburg and it is vital to the funding of the Seeley Lake Clinic. Take away Medicaid funding and several things happen—services are reduced, costs to private pay patients and those on private insurance escalate, property taxes may increase to subsidize the health care facilities, or, worst case, they close. I didn’t go to Helena to destroy rural health care and cripple our hospitals.

“Tax-Hike” Schreiber is campaigning on a platform of “protecting rural values.” It is meaningless rhetoric when you look at her actions and policy positions. She supports increasing residential property tax, her family is paying the Frontier Institute to promote the sales tax, and she has actively supported legislation to pull students out of public schools and put them in private schools at the taxpayer’s expense—a potential death sentence to small rural schools like those found Ovando, Helmville, Avon, Elliston, Garrison and Hall.

Anyone who understands rural values, and San Francisco Schreiber does not, knows that the school is the center of community life in a small town.

Now, Schreiber is again allied with AFP in an assault on the only available health care option for thousands of people in the district, its clinics, and hospitals.

Sadly, Schreiber is a woman who has always enjoyed a rich and privileged life from growing up in Silicon Valley until now, and she neither understands nor cares about those of lesser means. AFP and Schreiber are not on your side.