McConnell-aligned group launches $4M ad campaign against ‘Medicare for All’

A GOP outside group aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is launching a multimillion-dollar ad campaign against “Medicare for All.”

The group One Nation is spending $4 million on the first round of TV, radio and digital ads nationwide, but the full 18-month campaign will exceed that total.

{mosads}“How long will you wait for care?” the ad’s narrator states. “In other countries with socialized health care, patients wait weeks, even months, for treatment. Everyone forced into the same government plan no matter how serious.”

Highlight perceived flaws in Medicare for All is a central GOP line of attack for the 2020 campaign.

Republicans are trying to pivot the health care debate away from ObamaCare and pre-existing conditions, issues that helped Democrats win back the House last year, to a warning of change and disruption from a government-run health insurance system for all.

“If you’re a union worker, a family dependent on employer insurance, or a senior relying on traditional Medicare, so-called Medicare for All will turn your world upside down,” One Nation President Steven Law, a former chief of staff for McConnell, said in a statement.

The ad campaign’s launch comes ahead of the first Democratic presidential debates next week, where several of the leading candidates have embraced Medicare for All, though it remains a key dividing line within the crowded Democratic field.

“Medicare for All would eliminate private insurance for 180 million people,” the ad states. “You and every American waiting in the same government-run plan.”

The plan has been a major sticking point between top-tier 2020 Democratic candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former Vice President Joe Biden, who was the vice president when ObamaCare became law.

Biden has proposed giving everyone an opportunity to buy into Medicare but has stopped short of backing the Medicare for All proposal that has been championed by Sanders.