UPDATED: A Chapel Hill woman who testified before a U.S. Senate committee in November about her rising health insurance costs is featured in a new political TV ad aimed at Democrat Kay Hagan.
Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group aligned against the federal health care law, launched the 30-second spot Thursday with a $1.4 million ad buy to run it in most of the state’s media markets. (See it below.)
It’s the third ad from AFP in recent months that puts pressure on Hagan as she campaigns for re-election in a tough race and brings the outside group’s total spending against Hagan to more than $4.2 million, a spokesman said.
In the spot, Shelia Salter, a sole proprietor of a marketing consulting firm, talks to the camera and describes how she lost her previous Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance and now has a temporary policy with a 20 percent cost hike. She said the cost will rise another $4,500 for 2015.
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“Kay Hagan, she just doesn’t get it,” Salter says.
Salter told her story to the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee in November. “I was shocked back in September when I received notice from Blue Cross Blue Shield that my health care plan was being canceled,” Sheila Salter told the committee, according to the Washington Post. She added, “shocked isn’t even the right word — it’s unacceptable.”
The North Carolina ad (running in every major media market except Asheville) is one of three running across the nation. The others in Louisiana and New Hampshire bring the national ad buy to more than $2.5 million, according to the organization. (AFP originally reported a $900,000 buy behind the new ad in North Carolina but later corrected it to $1.4 million.)
Hagan campaign spokeswoman Sadie Weiner replied: “Kay supports a commonsense fix to allow people to keep their plans, but all of her opponents and their special interest backers want to go back to a time when insurance companies can charge women more for coverage, drop you from your plan when you get sick and deny you care altogether because of a pre-existing condition.”
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