News & Brews December 6, 2021

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Former U.S. Rep Melissa Hart says she’s running for governor

The GOP gubernatorial field is about to get another candidate. Former U.S. Rep. Melissa Hart, who served in Congress representing Pennsylvania’s 4th Congressional District in southwestern PA from 2001-2007, says she plans to officially launch her campaign for governor early in 2022. The Inquirer reports, “Hart has been out of politics working as a lawyer for 14 years. She’s currently a consultant for Hergenroeder Rega Ewing & Kenney, LLC in Pittsburgh. In the early 2000s she was seen as a rising star in her party, the first Republican woman to be elected to a full term in the state Senate, when she was 28, and the first woman Republican to be elected to federal office in Pennsylvania.”

David McCormick expected to announce for U.S. Senate

Politico reported last week that Bridgewater Associates CEO, former Treasury Department official, and Gulf War veteran David McCormick is expected to enter the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in the coming weeks. On Saturday, The Hill published a piecelooking at McCormick’s expected candidacy against the backdrop of other Republicans who have already announced their campaigns.

Poll: Wolf, Biden, vaccine mandates, and more

According to a Muhlenberg College/Morning Call poll of 419 adults in Pennsylvania, just 35% approve of Gov. Wolf’s handling of COVID, while 44% disapprove. On President Biden’s COVID response, 40% of Pennsylvanians approve while 45% disapprove. Respondents were almost evenly split on employer vaccine mandates, with 50% saying employers should not be able to require COVID shots while 49% saying they should be able to. See more of the poll’s results here.

5pm deadline today for you to submit your congressional map!

Here’s your chance to feed your inner cartographer! The deadline for PA residents to submit their proposed congressional district maps is 5pm today (an extension from the original Dec. 3 deadline). Click here for instructions and the link to submit your map.

Op-Ed: ‘Reckoning with insurance for better patient choice in healthcare’

Yaël Ossowski, deputy director at the Consumer Choice Center, has an op-ed in Broad + Liberty noting that making our healthcare system “more competitive and fair” will require a “reckoning with insurance.” One step toward this goal, he writes, is legislation introduced by Sen. Judy Ward (Blair, Cumberland, Franklin, Fulton, and Huntindgon counties) that would implement “assignment of benefits” that would direct “insurance companies to pay a dentist directly for services rendered to a patient.” Read the piece here.

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