NC-Sen: The progressive group End Citizens United has launched a new $2 million ad campaign against Republican Sen. Thom Tillis. “Tillis took thousands from drug companies,” the narrator says in its TV spot, “And voted to let them raise prices on hundreds of drugs.” The commercial continues, “Tillis took money from insurance companies. And voted to let them deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.”
On the other side, we have our first downballot ad in years from American Crossroads, which was once one of the most prominent groups on the right but went dormant for years. The PAC, which is now run by allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, uses its opening TV spot to argue that Democrat Cal Cunningham would do away with the filibuster if elected.
That’s not a subject that appears in TV ads much, and indeed, Crossroads’ narrator doesn’t actually say the word “filibuster.” Instead, she argues that liberal leaders “know Cunningham's supports changing the rules so they can jam through their government-run health care scheme that could force hospitals to close.”
Republicans have been running commercials in races across the county that have argued that Democrats would endanger hospitals. PoliticFact’s Victoria Knight took a look last month at a NRSC commercial in Montana that made this claim and explained that this claim comes from a 2019 study by the consulting firm Navigant that was paid for by “a health industry coalition including drugmakers, insurance companies and private hospitals.”
Knight writes of the Navigant study, which this Crossroads ad also cites, “It assumes the implementation of a public option for health insurance would lead to lower reimbursement rates and cause rural hospitals to close. Experts say this conclusion is difficult to draw without knowing who would be covered by the public option and how it would pay providers.” A public health expert also said that the public option, which Cunningham supports, would instead “benefit rural hospitals, since getting virtually nothing from uninsured patients is worse than getting a reasonably good rate from the public option.”
