Greg Murphy, a urologist who graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill, was raised in Raleigh. He served in the N.C. General Assembly from 2015-2019. He has represented North Carolina’s 3rd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2019. He serves on the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and the Committee on House Administration.
Before serving in Congress, Murphy was appointed to the N.C. General Assembly in 2015, a seat which he was elected to in 2016. He was a state representative until 2019.
Murphy completed his undergraduate degree at Davidson College. He is a practicing urologist who graduated from UNC Chapel Hill’s School of Medicine. He has a wife and three children.
Candidate Q&A:
What do you see as the biggest financial and administrative challenge to implementing the work requirements for Medicaid that were included in the One Big Beautiful Bill?
The One Big Beautiful Bill created commonsense Medicaid reforms, including work requirements for individuals capable of working, blocking illegal immigrants from receiving benefits, and increased eligibility verifications to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse. These reforms were long overdue.
Further, it added the Rural Health Transformation Fund, establishing a $50 billion funding stream through CMS (centers for medicare and medicaid services) for state investments in rural health and support for rural health providers. Funding for this program lasts for 5 years, starting this year. As a physician of 35 years serving, I understood how desperately Medicaid needed to be strengthened for recipients and protected from fraudsters stealing benefits from those in need.
What would be your plan for ensuring the future security/strength of Social Security and Medicare?
Social Security and Medicare are set to become insolvent in the near future. Without reforms that protect these critical programs for beneficiaries, benefits will face steep cuts and access to affordable, high-quality healthcare will dry up. Congress must take this coming threat seriously, set politics aside, and deliver a strong bipartisan solution to ensure that those in need continue to be taken care of. We will need to look at three or four different issues. We will need to look at age of eligibility, means testing (which means perhaps those who are wealthy may not get as much as other individuals), and the taxation structure. We have a basic math problem. People are living longer, and fewer people are paying into the system. It needs to be fixed.
What would you support in Congress as a plan to help control health care/ pharmaceutical costs?
I have introduced numerous bills, mostly bipartisan, to lower the cost of quality healthcare for Eastern North Carolinians. For example, I introduced the Every Dollar Counts Act to lower out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs and the No Surprises Enforcement Act to protect patients from surprise medical bills. The primary driver of increasing costs is greedy health insurers who put profits above patients. As both a physician and patient, I have experienced the treacherous cycle of denials for medically necessary care. The health insurance industry is the most powerful lobby in Washington, and I am unafraid to take them on. I also believe that Direct-to-Consumer Advertising, those pesky pharmaceutical commercials we all see on television, is an unnecessary $20+ billion cost to our pharmaceuticals. We are only one of two countries in the world that allow such advertising. As a physician, I have never prescribed a single drug because a patient came in and told me they saw it on television. This advertising drives up costs and drives up utilization.
What steps would you take to improve access to health care in rural areas? How do we make the Rural Health Transformation Program successful in North Carolina?
I introduced the Medicare Patient Access and Practice Stabilization Act to support physicians and protect access to care for Medicare beneficiaries. Rural practices are drying up because of oligopolistic consolidation of the healthcare industry. This bill ensures our independent physicians who care for folks across Eastern North Carolina can continue to keep their doors open rather than retire early or sell out to a big hospital. Further, I fought for the $50 Rural Health Transformation Fund in the One Big Beautiful Bill, having listened to the needs of our providers across our rural communities. This fund is already paying dividends, and I look forward to the continued investment for the next several years.
One of the reasons we have such challenges in rural areas now is the drying up of manufacturing and good-paying jobs that provide insurance. As we work to bring manufacturing back to the US with good-paying jobs, this will help provide people with health insurance.
The rollout of AI is moving fast, including in health care, and leaders in that space are calling for things to slow down. What federal moves should be taken to regulate it, if at all?
Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing healthcare at the speed of light, but we must protect the physician-in-the-loop. While advancements in diagnostics, research, and administrative work will advance medicine in incredible ways, the value of a trained physician and sentient influence cannot be eroded. This is especially important for prior authorization decisions — patients are not merely numbers on a spreadsheet. We cannot allow greedy health insurers to utilize AI to deny healthcare to those in need. Congress must establish sensible guardrails that ensure that the growth of AI in the field of medicine does no harm to patients. We must be hypervigilant to make sure that AI is used for good purposes and not to deny care.
Where do you stand on federal vaccine policy? What should be done to prevent future disease outbreaks?
Support for America’s public health institutions eroded during the pandemic due to misleading, and frankly, at times, false information surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines and mandates to receive them. As a physician and former medical missionary, I am very supportive of lifesaving vaccinations. Our determination of need must be based on apolitical, rigorous science, and our public health officials must not be coercive; our goal is to ensure that we keep all Americans healthy and prevent avoidable outbreaks of treatable diseases. Vaccines, as they always have been, should be given to people who are at risk for severe disease.
We’ve had some high-profile food contamination outbreaks, yet the federal government is pulling back on regulation of food, air and water. What level of federal regulation do you support and why?
Protecting the quality of our food, air, and water is of utmost importance to me. What we put into our bodies impacts our health. 90% of the $4.1 trillion this country spends each year on healthcare goes toward chronic disease. I support the FDA and EPA’s roles in enacting smart regulation that protects consumers. However, we must strike a healthy balance so that we do not overregulate, harming businesses while achieving little in the way of improving public health.
PFAS contamination is a nationwide issue; how do you address it while balancing public safety and business interests?
We must ensure that we take PFAS and other contaminants that make it into our water seriously. Thankfully, innovation in our manufacturing, energy, and farming industries has made production far cleaner and healthier than in foreign nations. Striking the right balance helps protect American jobs and the health of our nation.
The building and placement of data centers have become a big issue, particularly in many rural communities. What should be the federal government’s role, if any, in how these are developed?
We are in an arms race, similar to the Cold War, with China to be the world’s leader in Artificial Intelligence. If the Chinese Communist Party is allowed to win this race, our domestic and international security will be vulnerable beyond comprehension. Data centers allow us to stay ahead of China in the artificial intelligence race. The reality is this: data centers have been in use for decades, and they are the reason we are able to use our smartphones, search on Google, post on social media, and stream our favorite movies on Netflix. Policymakers need to make sure that if data centers are built, they do not use up or taint our community’s water supply, drive up energy costs and weaken our grid, or become noisy disturbances. They should be constructed in areas that do not affect normal life.
Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know?
I am a lifelong resident of Greenville, NC, and a physician of 35 years, still seeing patients a few times a month. I have cared for every patient over those years, regardless of their ability to pay, with the utmost dedication and devotion. I carry that same work ethic in Congress. I am a commonsense individual and look to be a problem solver rather than a bomb thrower. I am fighting to lower costs, keep our border secure, take on greedy health insurance companies, and look out for our cherished farmers and veterans. It is an honor to represent my community in Congress, and I look forward to continuing to be a strong voice in Washington on its behalf.
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