Dive Brief:
- The American Hospital Association's political action committee is pouring money into TV commercials backing industry-friendly congressional Republican incumbents, in hopes of fending off more conservative challengers who take a tougher stance on government health spending.
- The hospital lobbying group's PAC has spent nearly $1 million on TV ads supporting candidates thus far this election season, Modern Healthcare said. That's roughly as much as AHA spent on radio and TV ads during the entire 2012 election cycle, according to the PAC's filings with the Federal Election Commission. And the November general election is still months away.
- In supporting congressional GOP incumbents facing Tea Party-aligned primary challengers, the AHA, for example, spent just over $100,000 each on ads supporting congressmen David Joyce of Ohio and Mike Simpson of Idaho. Both won their May primaries by comfortable margins.
Dive Insight:
AHA's direct-to-the voters approach stands in contrast to PACs of other major health-care lobbying groups, such as America's Health Insurance Plans and the Federation of American Hospitals, Modern Healthcare said. The latter groups typically make financial contributions to candidates instead of speaking directly to voters through media ads.
"PACs like us need to participate far more aggressively in races that are really in play," Tom Nickels, the AHA's senior vice president for federal relations, told Modern Healthcare. "It's a relatively finite number of races that are in play."
Since a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down spending restrictions by corporations, associations and unions, so-called super-PACs have grown to create an outsized influence on political expenditures, making it tougher for traditional PACs like AHA's to break through the noise,he said.
The AHA poured $200,000 into supporting Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), who edged past Tea party-based challenger Chris McDaniel in a runoff election in June. AHA's Nickels described Cochran as "a candidate who has been very, very supportive of hospitals in the state."
The AHA's PAC also has spent about $180,000 each on ads supporting two Senate Democrats facing difficult general election contests: Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Begich of Alaska.