Under the Umbrella:
IBX pays her husband's firm. Delco pays IBX.

Ballard Spahr LLP has been registered to lobby Congress for Independence Blue Cross since March 2021. The firm has filed 23 disclosures on the account and reported $380,000 in lobbying income through June 2026.

Representative Scanlon's husband, Mark Stewart, chaired Ballard Spahr for 12 years. He was chair when the firm signed IBX as a federal lobbying client. He stepped down at the end of 2023 and remains at the firm as Senior Counsel. Before Congress, Representative Scanlon held Ballard's pro bono post herself.

Three people have lobbied on the account: Brent Heberlee, Timothy Jenkins and Maria Tripplaar, a former staff director of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee. Stewart's name does not appear in the filings.

Medicare Advantage appears in every Ballard Spahr filing for IBX since late 2022. It is the privately run version of Medicare and a major line of business for insurers. In mid-2025 the firm added the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to its IBX issues. In 2021 it lobbied to extend the enhanced ACA premium tax credits, which the government pays directly to insurers.

H.R. 3069, Medicare for All, would make it unlawful for private insurers to sell coverage that duplicates the new public plan. It would also bar Medicare Advantage-style plan coordinators that don't provide care themselves.

The IBX PAC has given to Representative Scanlon's campaign 17 times since August 2018, for a total of $23,250, according to FEC records compiled by ProPublica. The last check was $1,000 on November 7, 2024. That was two days after she won reelection.

IBX is the largest health insurer in Southeastern Pennsylvania. For 2026, its HMO arm asked the state for an average 23.5% increase on individual plans in our region and got 22%. Its PPO arm asked for 16.7% and got 15.2%. The enhanced federal subsidies expired on December 31. Many Pennie customers saw their plan costs more than double. Nearly 202,000 Pennsylvanians canceled their Pennie coverage over the following nine months, Spotlight PA reported.

IBX wants another increase averaging about 14% for 2027. Final rates come out before open enrollment starts November 1.

IBX's parent company brought in $36.3 billion in 2025, up 13%, and still lost $423 million. The year before, it lost $239 million. It paid out 91.1 cents of each premium dollar in medical claims. The rest went to administration, taxes and overhead, and the lobbying contracts come out of that same share. Revenue keeps climbing and the losses keep growing. Members cover the difference in higher premiums.

Representative Scanlon has taken action on health care. In March 2026 she introduced the Take Back Our Hospitals Act with Senator Chris Murphy. The bill would ban private equity ownership of hospitals and nursing homes, and she cited Prospect Medical Holdings' collapse of Crozer as the reason. That fight is worth having. It also leaves the insurance industry untouched.

H.R. 3069 has 117 House cosponsors as of September 24, according to Congress.gov. Pennsylvania's Brendan Boyle, Chris Deluzio and Summer Lee are among them, and Representative Scanlon is not. In April 2026 she told the Swarthmore Phoenix that the public was not there yet for Medicare for All when she came to Congress. That was 2018. Since then, 117 of her colleagues have put their names on the bill. Delco premiums have jumped by double digits, and the insurer behind those increases kept its lobbying contract with her husband's firm.

She has given her reason. Put it next to the lobbying record and draw your own conclusion.

Pennie open enrollment runs November 1 through January 15. Check your 2027 rate the day it posts. Then call Representative Scanlon's office and ask one question on the record: will she cosponsor H.R. 3069 before this Congress ends?