Just as Republicans released their Obamacare replacement bill this evening, I saw this ad on television for the first time:
The ad, which first hit YouTube nearly two weeks ago, is part of a $7.4 million buy (so far, anyway) to provide air cover for the repeal effort.
It strikes me as a fairly effective presentation of Obamacare’s most obvious drawbacks for middle-class voters specifically. That’s the constituency Republicans really must persuade, as they (as opposed to poorer or wealthier Americans) were the ones hurt most and helped least by the law in the first place.
The individual insurance plan cancellations, followed up with offers to buy vastly more expensive Obamacare plans, hit this group hardest in 2013 and 2014. And in the time since, those who lost their insurance and their doctor have been able to appreciate how the law caused existing individual market customer’s quality of coverage to deteriorate in terms of providers available (the lady in the ad recounts how she couldn’t keep her OB/GYN — something not uncommon for those in the individual market).
It’s a nice reminder of events past that led to the dramatic result of the 2014 election — a gain of nine Senate seats and the defeat of five sitting Democratic senators who had voted for the law. Republicans would like to make sure people remember these things in 2018, although it’s anyone’s guess whether the law’s early failures can carry forward that far as a political issue.
