INTRODUCTION
With election season pretty much in full swing, ads from members of Congress trying to keep their seats next year are ramping up, not just in quantity, but in bogusness. While this is hardly the first year campaign ads have strayed from the truth, there’s been a noticeable and concerning new pattern among multiple Republicans running for reelection. From Iowa to Florida, and Colorado to New Jersey, Republicans are claiming to be…taking on “Big Insurance”?
You read that right. The very same Republicans who have sided with health insurance companies again and again, blocking any sort of meaningful health care reform since the Affordable Care Act, are now claiming to be enemies of the industry.
But their campaign bank accounts tell a different story.
Let’s take a look at some examples.
REP. MARIANNETTE JANE MILLER-MEEKS (IA-01)
Miller-Meeks is an ophthalmologist who has been in Congress since 2021. She has a new campaign ad out where she says, “In Congress, I fight the Big Insurance Lobby. I’m their number one enemy. Well, you know what I say to Big Insurance? Bring it on.”
Here’s the truth: Iowa Starting Line found that “Big Insurance” has been very generous to Miller-Meeks. In this election cycle alone, she brought in an astonishing $501,000 in health industry PAC donations, second biggest category in her campaign. $11,500 of that was from Big Insurance. She even rented an apartment from Big Pharma lobbyists and paid for it with tax dollars. At the time, she sat on the subcommittee that oversees drug pricing.
So, to summarize, she’s a physician, she took in a half million dollars from health industry PACs, and she voted for the OBBBA. All while running an ad telling Big Insurance to “bring it on.”
REP. KAT CAMMACK (FL-03)
Cammack has also been in Congress since 2021. She is currently running an ad where she says she is “taking on Big Insurance” and “fighting to increase care, lower costs and hold insurance companies accountable.”
Turns out that, this cycle alone, she’s already taken in $37,000 from Big Insurance companies. Since 2020, she’s received at least $113,500 from them.
REP. JEFF HURD (CO-03)
Hurd has been in office since 2025. He has a new ad out where he says he took on insurance and drug companies to lower costs. In the short time he has been in office, Hurd has already taken $6,500 from insurance companies alone, according to the Health Insurance Influence Tracker.
Given the type of pushback Hurd is getting from constituents, it’s not surprising that he’s pretending that he “took on insurance and drug companies.” This is from a report about a recent coffee he had for constituents:
As part of his official duties, he’s setting up coffees throughout the vast district to meet with constituents and hear their concerns. For more than an hour, Hurd went table to table at the Glenwood Springs library. He faced tough questions from voters like McCullough. She is a full-time caregiver for her adult son Chris, who lives with significant disabilities.
She told Hurd she was very disappointed he voted for the Republicans’ massive tax cut package in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and said it directly affected her family.
“I was not happy with that and still am not happy with that. And my question to you would be, why would you have voted for that if you know that it’s going to take money and services and everything away from your constituents?” [...]
He contended his vote didn’t cut services.
“Well, you haven’t convinced me. Sorry,” McCullough replied.
There is no mention of health care anywhere on Hurd’s campaign website.
REP. THOMAS KEAN, JR. (NJ-07)
Kean has been in office since 2023. In his new ad, he appears very, very serious saying, “I meet too many families who pay too much, who get denied care, who suffer because of Big Insurance companies. I had enough. I took on the insurance companies to get costs down…” He also took their money. This cycle, he took $8,000 from them. Since he took office, he’s taken over $21,000 from the ten largest insurers.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE…
In July of 2025, Donald Trump signed the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) into law. It is estimated to cut taxes, mostly for the super-wealthy, by $4.5 billion over the next ten years. To pay for that tax giveaway, it cuts health care spending by over $1 trillion and will throw a projected 10 million people off their health insurance coverage by 2034.
The bill passed both the House and Senate exclusively with Republican votes. In fact, only three GOP Senators and two GOP House members voted against it.
With health care costs now surging – along with groceries, gas, and just about everything else – Democrats are hammering Republicans with an affordability message that is resonating with voters. It’s no wonder Republicans are now pretending that they are the ones who care about affordability, telling voters that they are taking on insurance companies and blaming these corporations for the problem. It’s a diversion to avoid being accountable for their own personal roles in the massive spike in health care costs being experienced by nearly every American.
CONCLUSION
Thanks to moves by Republicans last year, there are few Americans who haven’t seen their health care costs skyrocket. After passing the OBBBA, they made matters worse by refusing to extend the enhanced premium subsidies for Affordable Care Act policies, ensuring that those who can least afford it get hit a second time.
But affordability is in the front of everyone’s minds as we head into the November midterms and Republicans know it. Their efforts to claim they have “taken on Big Insurance companies” fall flat when Americans see no improvement and especially when they find out these very same lawmakers happily take campaign donations from the corporations they claim to be taking on.
Their hypocrisy rivals the days of Republicans taking credit for the infrastructure investments put in place by Democrats and holding giant checks for photo ops.
The question is if voters will hold them accountable. A big part of that is making sure they know about the hypocrisy and know that it is Republicans who are responsible for their much higher health care costs, no matter what they say in their campaign ads.
That, in part, is on us.
Big flag on the play here. I would say not even a yellow card, but a red card.
The conflicts of interest are glaring across the majority of members across both parties and lack of moral courage since 1996 by the Democrats and Republicans is disturbing in equal measure. Additionally, the reason the Committee to Protect Health Care does not unilaterally--fully--endorse Senate Bill 1506 and House Resolution 3069 as an organization is due to glaring conflicts of interest across the organization, well.
Paging America also marginalizes the dialogue about Single Payer.
Regarding the tidal wave of support for the National Improved Medicare for All bill—non-privatized Single Payer Universal Healthcare, we have to get back to understanding the gravity of the commercial health insurance investment bank industry Denial of Care Harm-for-Profit business model which is hard to do given so much else we are facing now. But as I believe: what has happened, and is happening, in healthcare and medicine is a lens into the other forces at work in our lives as Americans.
The plague of hypocrisy, amorality and greed across all parties and citizens is astonishing.
I read daily about the effects of “denials” and listen to people speak about the business model and it is extremely frustrating because public health academics (authors), young physicians, 2026 candidates and others are writing as if Denial of Care is a new thing.
In fact, Denial of Care has been the commercial health insurance investment bank industry business model for more than 40 years. (And, it’s still legal in the United States of America as of this writing.)
Despite our collective efforts since 1996 — as ethical medical professionals, investigative journalists, artists and writers — there seems to be little historical context and the very human element and pain is minimized—something it seems as if we need to keep alive during the AI takeover as Denial of Care Harm-for-Profit by AI has been normalized.
The nonchalance related to the scope and scale of preventable harm and death caused by a business model that deliberately obstructs medical care for profit is deeply, deeply disturbing. The body politic, and our human bodies, feel the primal hurt this nonchalance has imposed. Like a hairline fracture, the damage of Denial of Care just keeps traveling through our patients, our businesses, our families and our lives.
In court transcripts since 1996, defense attorneys who represent commercial health insurance investment banks often attack whistleblowers and plaintiffs who have witnessed or been the victims of Harm-for-Profit. They make the argument that “this is just the way we do business.”
To lawyers in the court room now who have graduated elite, prestigious law schools and to public health academics / authors claiming the reduction of prior-authorization is a “win,” we’ve been doing this on behalf of patients and medical professionals for more years than you are old and we have reported on and documented from the beginning the tragedies from “doing business…”
Ethical physicians try to educate lawyers in Denial of Care cases because they have no history or understanding of the systems involved and their evolution. Or, commonly, they do, and don’t give a damn.
Sadly, everything we have reported, produced and published on the Denial of Care Harm-for-Profit business model in the mid-1990’s is as relevant today as it was then. The big difference is that the haste, speed and greed is now magnified 1,000 fold.
We will continue producing and publishing on how amoral, unethical and frequently criminal the persons are who perpetuate and defend the Systemness of commercial health insurance investment banks and their corporate medicine accomplices. We will continue to ask all Americans to cut through the noise and ask: “Should our bodies be traded on Wall Street?”
As Americans cry out to Congress to pass Senate Bill 1506 and House Resolution 3069 in the name of humanity, who is complicit in justifying the preventable harm and death?
We know the answer.