During his first congressional campaign, U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans (R-CO) was asked in a debate whether he would “terminate the Affordable Care Act.” He never answered the question, but he responded to it, in part, by bringing up his wife’s “high-risk pregnancies” and his two boys’ expensive medical “complications,” and then saying, “So I know how critically important it is to make sure that Americans and Coloradans have access to affordable health care.”
It’s a theme Evans has returned to multiple times since he’s been in office. He reveals the details of his own family’s medical challenges to assure people he understands the need to improve health care in the U.S.
He even referred to his kids’ medical problems as he defended his vote to pass President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill (BBB), which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates will throw 10 million Americans off the health insurance rolls by 2034. In Evans’ district alone, 78,000 will lose their insurance, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank.
“If you’re like one of my kiddos and you’re medically complex, if you’re a pregnant woman, if you’re kids, none of this stuff applies to you in terms of work requirements or any of the reforms in Medicaid,” Evans said at a news conference at the time, as reported by the Colorado Sun. “In fact, it benefits you by preserving these resources.”
However, experts say the BBB will destabilize Medicaid in its entirety — as well as the broader health care system. And based on Evans’ detailed descriptions of at least one of his children’s illnesses, the BBB’s cuts could threaten a Medicaid program that may have helped Evans himself pay his family’s huge medical bills.
Evans’ eldest son spent a month in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) upon birth with “life- threatening medical complications,” according to the health section of Evans’ 2024 campaign website. Spinal meningitis left the preemie clinging to life, with a 15% chance of survival, Evans told a packed audience at Patrick Henry College’s graduation ceremony last year. “A month in the hospital, praying, praying and praying some more that our baby would survive,” he said, explaining how “faith” helped him get through the ordeal. (Thankfully, his son fully recovered.)
At the time of his eldest son’s illness, Evans was a police officer in Arvada. As such, he was probably enrolled in a group health insurance plan and made about $85,000 a year – an amount that would usually make public assistance out of reach.
But when a child spends 30 days or more in a hospital or facility, that infant is considered institutionalized, and the rules change. Suddenly, the family’s income doesn’t matter. Just the infant’s income is counted, which, of course, is zero.
“We refer [to it] as ‘30 day Medicaid,’” says Megan Bowser, executive director of Family Voices Colorado, a nonprofit organization that helps families with children who have special health care needs or disabilities access health care. “Most babies who are in the NICU for more than 30 days can qualify for Medicaid that way. Children get continuous eligibility for Medicaid for one year, so if they qualify initially based on being hospitalized for more than 30 days, they maintain that coverage for one year even after they are discharged from the hospital.”
Evans said on his campaign website that after his infant spent a “month in the hospital,” he and his wife “received a six-figure hospital bill that insurance paid.”
Which might sound strange to folks who have any experience with hospital bills. Insurance rarely pays all of it. There are co-payments, often $150 per day for hospitalization, and deductibles (both individual and family). And frequently, there is a cost-sharing percentage, usually 3% to 5%. When you’re talking about a six-figure bill, the copayments, deductibles, and cost-sharing charges add up quickly to tens of thousands of dollars.
But Evans says that insurance covered all of the costs of his eldest son’s illness. Which is exactly what Medicaid would do after a 30-day stay in the NICU. Colorado is among the states where Medicaid, a state-federal partnership that varies somewhat by state, covers children with medically complex conditions, even for families with private insurance.
“It doesn’t matter if the parent has insurance or not,” says Marc Williams at the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Finance. “If the child has other insurance, then Medicaid is the payor of last resort.” This means that Medicaid picks up all the expenses that private insurance leaves behind: all the deductibles, co-pays, and cost-sharing. Even for high-income earners, because under the 30-day rule, the family’s income is not counted.
“Medicaid has no cost-sharing,” explains Julie Reiskin of the Colorado Cross Disability Coalition, an advocacy group.
So the tens of thousands of dollars Evans might have paid out of pocket would get taken care of. Insurance (because that’s what Medicaid is) would have, indeed, paid the bill.
Evans Refuses To Say Whether He Got Medicaid Benefits
But Evans hasn’t said whether Medicaid picked up any of the tab.
In fact, he refuses to answer questions about his possible use of Medicaid, claiming that his concern over his children’s privacy prevents him from disclosing how he paid for their care.
“Medicaid exists precisely to help families and individuals with complex medical needs,” explains Adam Fox, deputy director of the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, a progressive advocacy group. “It’s important for everybody to be able to access those services if they’re eligible.”
Other Swing Reps Aren’t Lockstep With Trump on Medicaid Cuts
Medicaid provides healthcare for more than 80 million people nationwide and for more than 200,000 (one out of four people and fully half of all children) in his district. And yet, Evans, a freshman congressman, voted in favor of the Medicaid-slashing Big Beautiful Bill twice. He even went so far as to take “100% credit” for the bill’s passage, saying his personal political victory in his swing district was the determining factor allowing his party to push the legislation through.
Most vulnerable Republicans hedge a little when it comes to Medicaid cuts. There are four congressional Republicans nationwide considered the most “vulnerable” according to the Cook Report, a nonpartisan newsletter considered the premier source for campaign handicapping: Mike Lawler of New York (on the border with New Jersey); Brian Fitzpatrick from the wealthy suburbs of Pennsylvania; Don Bacon from the moderate suburbs of Nebraska, and Evans of Colorado’s heavily Latino 8th Congressional District, which is located north and east of Denver.
Last year, three big votes impacted the nation’s Medicaid program. There was the budget resolution, which asked Congress to commit to cutting billions out of a budget in which Medicaid made up the bulk of non-mandatory spending. There was the Medicaid overhaul bill, which was the blueprint for how Republicans planned to cut the $880 billion out of the program. And there was the final vote on the Big Beautiful Bill (HR 1), which gutted Medicaid in the stark black-and-white of legalese: eligibility cuts, work requirements, cuts to health care provider reimbursement, and a doubling of program red tape. In the three votes, health insurance for tens of millions of Americans vanished into thin air.
Lawler, Fitzpatrick, and Bacon publicly pushed back on a number of these votes and a handful of provisions. While none of them voted “no,” they signed letters, gave speeches, and drew lines in the sand, protesting deep provider cuts and impacts on rural hospitals and vulnerable populations,
Of the four, only Evans was in lockstep with the Trump administration. He argued that his votes to cut Medicaid would help fortify the program “for the people who need it.” Despite early nonpartisan warnings that no one is off limits in the wholesale slashing of the program under the BBB, Evans denied the cuts would hurt children – again citing his sons’ healthcare issues to make his point.
It’s a move that chafes consumer advocates.
“For an individual with family members with complex medical needs, we should certainly hope to see them voting to preserve Medicaid, and not cut it, as Gabe Evans has done,” said Fox.
Evans Repeatedly Raises His Kids’ Medical History
Over the years, Gabe Evans has repeatedly detailed the travails of his children’s medical problems. Even before his eldest son was born, his wife, Anne Garboczi Evans, wrote in her blog about her son’s myriad problems in utero and the weeks of testing she underwent as doctors looked for genetic abnormalities.
Then Gabe Evans picked up the narrative and spoke about both his sons’ medical issues at the Colorado Statehouse, on the campaign trail when he ran for U.S. Congress, and in his address to his private Christian alma mater, Patrick Henry College.
Evans has used descriptions of his children’s medical conditions to support his positions on multiple issues and on Facebook posts, where he included photos of his child and the comment, “All day at Children’s Hospital. Again. Another expensive medical procedure for my kiddo. Transparent and affordable healthcare is essential! Versus the Left’s empty promises that raised premiums and ran 4 insurers out of Colorado last year.”
And at a time when some congresspeople take pains to ensure their children’s faces aren’t revealed on the internet, Evans posts family photos, including images of his sons’ faces, on his congressional website and elsewhere.
So his insistence that he is protecting his children’s privacy by not revealing if Medicaid is paying their bills is inconsistent with the way he uses his children’s photos and medical histories for other purposes.
Is Evans Afraid of Being Called a Hypocrite?
If he has not taken the help Medicaid offers for the needs of his medically complex children, why not say so?
Could Evans believe that if he admits to benefiting from the program as it was intended to work — to help families like his with children who have expensive and complicated medical issues — he might look hypocritical, given his votes to undermine Medicaid and his insistence that “government involvement” in health care “doesn’t work?”
Repeated attempts to reach Evans’ office and get answers about his own family’s history with Medicaid went unanswered.
Jason Salzman contributed to this story.
