Health care takes center stage in battle for Congress
WASHINGTON — In his two newest campaign advertisements, Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana portrays himself as a health care savior, featuring local nurses who say his expansion of public health insurance rescued Montanans and their hospitals.
Steve Daines, the firstterm Republican senator whom Bullock is trying to unseat, has his own ad, accusing the governor, a Democrat, of favoring “government-controlled” health care.
The dueling commercials illustrate a reality of the accelerating campaign season, which is entering a crucial period as the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage: Health care is shaping up as a driving force in deciding the outcome in November.
Its salience has been amplified by the pandemic and accompanying job losses that have left millions of Americans anxious about their own health and ability to pay medical bills. And the contrast between Republicans and Democrats could not be starker than it has been in recent weeks, as the Trump administration pushed forward with its lawsuit calling on the Supreme Court to jettison the Affordable Care Act once and for all, and House Democrats countered by passing a bill to expand it.
The fight over health care is being waged at the presidential level, in all of the competitive Senate races and in House contests across the country. Democrats intend to press what they see as their advantage over Republicans, who for years have called for dismantling the health care law — voting to repeal it and supporting President Donald Trump’s legal efforts to overturn it — while failing to offer an alternative plan.
Democrats are eager to replay their winning strategy of 2018, when they won control of the House by emphasizing that Republicans were threatening to strip away protections for preexisting health conditions and leave sick Americans on their own.
“It’s 2018 again, but on steroids,” said Leslie Dach, chair of the liberal advocacy group Protect Our Care, which has been fighting Republican efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act. “Trump has put the Republican Party totally on the wrong side of this.”
The battle is also likely to figure prominently in the coming negotiations over the next coronavirus recovery package in Congress, which Republicans are planning to use as a vehicle to try to redeem themselves with voters on health care by offering provisions aimed at meeting medical needs stemming from the pandemic. Top Republicans say they see their legislative response to the virus as paramount to voters.
“I think the virus spending is more important than the other health care issues,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee on health spending and is involved in Republican efforts to assemble the plan to be unveiled this month.
Democrats and their allies say they do not believe that any action before November by Senate Republicans will be enough to neutralize the issue, given the party’s extensive history of trying to overturn the health care law without putting forth any alternative. They point to recent polls that show Democrats are far more trusted on health care than congressional Republicans or Trump.
And they are pressing their case in campaigns across the country through an array of ads aimed at Republicans. Last week, Protect Our Care began a $2 million advertising campaign in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin — all key battlegrounds — condemning Trump’s response to the pandemic. One highlighted the toll the virus had taken on those in nursing homes and other older Americans.
“This crisis did not have to be as bad as it was,” a health care worker says at the end of one such spot.
On Thursday, Majority Forward, a group aligned with Democrats, began part of a $3 million ad campaign in Georgia accusing Sen. David Perdue, the Republican incumbent, of siding with insurance companies over beneficiaries, “even during a pandemic.” The group began a similar seven-figure effort in Colorado against Sen. Cory Gardner, the endangered Republican incumbent.