EXCLUSIVE: Republicans target ‘Big Insurance’ in ads as polling shows opening against Democrats

Republican candidates across the country are increasingly taking aim at big health insurance companies in campaign ads, turning an industry traditionally targeted by Democrats into a growing GOP affordability message ahead of the midterms.

The strategy is showing up in competitive Senate and House races from Iowa to New Jersey and Colorado. And Republican polling suggests there is a major political opening.

President Donald Trump’s political team recently presented Senate Republicans with polling showing that one of the party’s strongest messages was going after health insurance companies, Axios reported.

Republicans held a 46-point advantage in the polling when calling for greater transparency around insurers’ profits, claim denials and wait times while accusing Democrats of “lining insurers’ pockets,” according to slides reviewed by Axios.

Candidates are already putting that message on television.

In Iowa, Republican Senate candidate Ashley Hinson launched her campaign with an ad declaring that “healthcare companies are ripping you off.”

“I’m working with President Trump to take on big insurance companies,” Hinson says in the ad.

Hinson has since introduced legislation requiring insurers to disclose more information about how often they deny or delay care. Hinson is also widely considered one of Republicans’ strongest candidates this cycle, and her ability to hone in on the politically-popular issue of promising lower insurance costs could be a template for other campaigns to follow. Hinson also has a long record in Congress of voting for more transparency for health insurers and middlemen to lower costs for patients. 

Fellow Iowa Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks has gone even further.

“I fight against big insurance companies that are ripping us off,” Miller-Meeks says in one campaign ad.

Her latest general-election commercial calls Miller-Meeks the “number one enemy” of the big insurance lobby.

“You know what I say to big insurance?” Miller-Meeks says. “Bring it on.”

The message is not new for Miller-Meeks. In a December op-ed for the Washington Reporter, she wrote that “big insurance companies have profited while working families have paid the price.”

In New Jersey, Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. is making the issue a central part of his campaign in one of the country’s most competitive House districts.

“I meet too many families who pay too much, who get denied care, who suffer because of big insurance companies,” Kean says in his “Every Patient” ad. “I had enough. I took on the insurance companies to get costs down.”

Kean has now turned the argument directly against his Democratic opponent.

A second television ad attacks Democrat Rebecca Bennett over her work for health-care companies and features a mother describing her experience fighting insurers for her daughter’s care. The companies highlighted by the Kean campaign are health-care companies rather than direct health insurers, according to the New Jersey Globe.

Colorado Republican Rep. Jeff Hurd is using similar language.

“I took on insurance,” Hurd says in his first reelection ad.

Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida has also run advertising describing herself as “taking on Big Insurance” and fighting to lower costs and hold insurance companies accountable.

The campaign message builds on a broader Republican push..

The Washington Reporter documented last year how Republicans across the country were increasingly targeting pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, over prescription drug costs and a lack of price transparency.

That push resulted in major PBM reforms this year. As the Reporter reported last month, Republicans have paired those reforms with TrumpRx as part of a broader effort to make health-care affordability a political strength.

The message comes directly from the top of the Republican Party.

Trump has increasingly portrayed insurers and health-care middlemen as barriers between patients and affordable care. When he announced his Great Healthcare Plan in January, Trump said his proposal would redirect money toward patients rather than insurers.

“The big insurance companies lose and the people of our country win,” Trump said.

The Reporter has also documented how support for TrumpRx moved rapidly into Republican primary politics earlier this year, with GOP candidates increasingly highlighting the program as part of their affordability message.