"What will the Republican healthcare bill cost you?" That's the question that appears onscreen at the end of an ad that’s part of a new digital campaign from the Senate Democrats. The ad, which uses no dialogue, depicts a couple separately pawning off an engagement ring and a truck in order to afford the hospital stay of their little girl.
It's effective. Anyone who isn't a one percenter can imagine what losing healthcare coverage for a sick child might cost them and the lengths they would go to to make certain their child got the care they needed. The ad invites viewers to contemplate that scenario in the run up to a critical vote on Republicans' last-ditch effort to pass a bill the would gut pre-existing condition protections included in Obama's Affordable Care Act.
Through the new campaign, Democrats are targeting that message at voters in 12 states where the vote could prove problematic for Republican incumbents, writes The Hill.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's (DSCC) digital ad campaign will lead to internet users in 12 states seeing the ads when they use Google to search terms such as "health care," "Jimmy Kimmel" and "repeal."
The campaign is targeting lawmakers in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin, according to Business Insider.
Think GOP Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Dean Heller of Nevada, Rob Portman of Ohio, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia—all senators who represent states that stand to lose billions in federal health funding under the new Graham-Cassidy repeal bill.
The tragic possibility that millions of Americans could find themselves in the very situation depicted in the ad has been brought to the fore by a running dialogue between comedian Jimmy Kimmel, whose son was born with a serious heart condition, and GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, who promised Kimmel in May that he wouldn't support a bill that deprived kids like his of coverage.
Kimmel has pounded both Cassidy and his bill in a series of monologues this week as Republicans have sought desperately to discredit his analysis of the bill. Naturally, the experts have come down on the side of Kimmel, who apparently knows more about health policy than the people we pay to study these things and produce legislation.
This is a loser for congressional Republicans either way. If they pass it, millions will actually lose their insurance, many of them Trump voters. If they don't pass it but vote for a bill that’s worse than its disastrously unpopular predecessor, they'll get buried for their support. And the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee won't let them forget it, promises spokesman David Bergstein.
"If Republicans continue to push forward with their expensive and unpopular agenda, there will be no rock GOP Senate candidates can hide under to escape the voters who will hold them accountable in 2018."