Coalition to air anti-Medicare for All ads during Democratic debates

A coalition of hospitals, insurance companies and drugmakers that oppose “Medicare for All” will air national television ads blasting the proposal during this week’s Democratic primary debates. 

Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, which is funded by influential health care groups like PhRMA, the American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association, will air the ads Tuesday and Wednesday nights as part of a six-figure television and digital campaign targeting the proposal and other expansions of Medicare. 

{mosads}Medicare for All is likely to be a big focus in both debates, as its author, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), is one of the top tier candidates running for president.

His plan is also backed at least in part by other Democratic presidential candidates including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (N.Y), Kamala Harris (Calif.), Cory Booker (N.J.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.)

In the ad, actors say they don’t want to be “forced” into a “one-size fits all government insurance system.

It targets not just Sanders’s proposal, but the public option plan put forth by Democratic front-runner and former Vice President Joe Biden. 

Sanders’s plan would move the U.S. to a single-payer health care system run by the government, virtually eliminating all private insurance. 

Biden’s plan would keep the current system, but add a government-run public option to compete with private insurance companies. 

Both plans are fiercely opposed by insurance companies, hospitals and drugmakers who would see profit losses. 

The ads argue the plans would lead to “higher taxes and higher premiums” and “lower quality care.” 

“Rather than handing more control over to politicians and bureaucrats, we should build and improve upon what’s working in American health care, while coming together to fix what isn’t,” said Lauren Crawford Shaver, the Partnership’s executive director.

Sanders, who will be on the debate stage Tuesday night, often blasts the health care industry’s “greed” in defending his Medicare for All plan. 

“We cannot continue to allow private health insurance companies to make massive profits by denying care to those that need it,” Sanders tweeted Monday. “That is fundamentally immoral and that is why we need Medicare for all.”