U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle adhered to his opposition to Congressional Republicans’ plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) at a town hall event Saturday, saying the plan will limit Pennsylvania’s ability to provide sufficient health care to the children, elderly and disabled.

Doyle met with constituents to outline his problems with the American Health Care Act (AHCA), the GOP legislation to replace the ACA and address questions and comments from those in attendance.

The town hall was held in Oakland’s Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall on March 18. The event was originally slated to run from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., but the event ran an hour over the allotted time after questions and comments ran long. Doors for the town hall opened at 1 p.m. and Doyle’s staff showed video excerpts from the Energy and Commerce Committee markup of the American Health Care Act on March 8. More than 300 people attended the event.

Several other local Democratic officials were present at the event. State Sen. Jay Costa, State Rep. Dan Frankel, Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, Allegheny County Democratic Committee Chair Nancy Mills and Pittsburgh City Councilman Corey O’Connor all attended the event, but did not speak.

Doyle was joined on stage by four panelists with separate experiences with the health care industry and ACA insurance. Ray Landis, the Advocacy Manager for AARP Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania’s Insurance Commissioner, Teresa Miller, both spoke to the crowd, as well as two local entrepreneurs who advocated for the ACA, Janice Nathan and Ali Shapiro.

Doyle and the panelists emphasized the repercussions of cutting Medicaid expansion, which would occur if AHCA is passed with its current language, throughout the night, warning that seniors would see a drastic cut in their benefits from the state.

“Should we see these Medicaid cuts, we may see the state pitting the health care needs of seniors against the health care needs of children,” Landis said during his remarks. Doyle also expressed doubt that the state’s GOP would act to fill the gap left in federal Medicaid funding.

In his remarks during the Energy and Commerce Committee markup, Doyle voiced his displeasure over the lack of an individual mandate in the AHCA, comments that he repeated during the town hall.

“What’s the point for a young, healthy person to buy in?” Doyle told the Globe. “When you take the [individual] mandate away, I think they need to think of the bigger picture of how the risk pool works.”

The risk pool is a risk management solution that provides safety nets for the medically insecure population. Doyle asserted that the health insurance market would considerably weaken without the individual mandate forcing young Americans to buy into the health insurance system.

“Their participation provides care to other people. We need young, healthy people in the market,” Doyle said. “For [Republicans] to get rid of the individual market makes the risk pool riskier and riskier.”

Both Doyle and Landis also repeatedly discussed an “Age tax” in the AHCA, referring to a provision in the bill that would distribute tax credits based on age, replacing the income-based subsidies in the ACA. This means that older people will receive larger tax credits for their health insurance than younger people, regardless of income.

“They won’t say there is an ‘Age tax’ in this bill, but that’s what it essentially is,” said Landis.

Much of the conversation between Doyle, the panelists and those in attendance focused on the Medicaid expansion cuts put forward in the Republicans’ health care bill. According to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Medicaid would see $370 billion in cuts from federal funding.

States would be required to make up the difference, or more likely, make deep cuts to their Medicaid payouts, which is one of Doyle’s largest points of contention with the proposed bill.

“This is what Medicaid funds in our state: children, seniors and the disabled,” Doyle said.

More than 700,000 Pennsylvanians are currently enrolled in Medicaid and another 415,000 received their health insurance coverage through the ACA marketplace.

A Congressional Budget Office analysis of the original legislation determined that 14 million fewer Americans would be covered by medicaid and 24 million Americans would be uncovered by 2026. The office concluded that an estimated 14 million people would lose their health insurance by the end of the year.

In an email to The Globe, Point Park University Managing Director of University Marketing and Public Relations Lou Corsaro said that the AHCA will have “no impact” on the health insurance offered to students.

Despite heavy public backlash to the AHCA, Republicans have moved the bill quickly through the House of Representatives.

The ACA replacement bill went through the Ways and Means Committee before it landed in Doyle’s Energy and Commerce Committee, where representatives engaged in a grueling 27-hour debate.

Most recently, the AHCA bill passed through the Budget Committee by a narrow margin in a 19-17 vote margin. Three Republicans in the Budget Committee voted against the AHCA.

Doyle told the crowd at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall that he believes that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wi., will try to get a vote on the bill on Thursday, though Doyle believes that some moderate Republicans are backing off the bill.

“I think we have a 50-50 chance of defeating this bill. There’s a lot of nervous Republicans,” Doyle said.