Londrigan cries foul over ads that Davis defends

Oct. 23--As the race for Illinois' 13th Congressional District continues to heat up, the campaigns of Springfield Democrat Betsy Dirksen Londrigan and U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis are clashing over new Davis ads that Londrigan says are untrue.

A TV ad from the Davis campaign includes pictures of Londrigan, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, and U.S. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

"A Madigan fundraiser, Betsy Londrigan would take us backward," a narrator says in the ad. "Londrigan joined Pelosi to oppose the middle class tax cut. Now Londrigan wants to pass a $32 trillion government takeover of healthcare. Madigan, Pelosi, Londrigan: higher taxes we can't afford."

"Throughout this campaign, career politician Rodney Davis has tried to hide from the fact that he voted to kick tens of thousands of Illinoisans off of their health insurance, gut protections for pre-existing conditions and charge older Americans more for their health care," Londrigan campaign manager Emma Brown said in a statement. "Now, Rodney Davis has the gall to lie repeatedly about Betsy's biography and her position on health care. ..."

Londrigan's campaign says she has never done fund-raising for Madigan or been employed by him. It also said she does not support a single-payer or any health care plan that would cost $32 trillion. It also says she has never proposed outlawing employer-provided health insurance.

Ashley Phelps, spokeswoman for Davis, pointed to a Sept. 11 Politico publication about lobbying including a notation under "New joint fundraisers" that the Betsy Dirksen Londrigan Victory Fund included Londrigan and the Democratic Party of Illinois. Madigan chairs the party.

The Londrigan campaign said it is usual for candidates of both parties to form joint committees with party organizations.

Phelps also said there are "multiple layors of protections for people with pre-existing conditions" in what Davis has backed. She reiterated that Londrigan is wrong to say Davis voted 11 times to gut protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC to support Republicans for the U.S. House, has also been running ads against Londrigan, including one that says her "radical healthcare plan could put government in control of your care, cost $32 trillion and nearly double the national debt. It could end employer provided insurance and end Medicare as we know it."

When that ad first came out in September, the Londrigan campaign tried, without success, to get TV stations to quit running it because they said it was false. A letter from the campaign, written by attorney Michael Kreloff, said Londrigan had expressed support for a "public option," but said that is "quite distinct" from "single-payer" or a "Medicare for all" plan. They cited a 2009 FactCheck.org report that noted that single-payer is a complete government-run health insurance system under which everyone is covered, but the public option is a single federal insurance plan that would compete with private insurance companies.

Kreloff also said in his letter that during the health care debate in 2009, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found the cost of a public option would be less than 3 percent of the $32 trillion being talked about for a single-payer plan.

The Congressional Leadership fund noted that Londrigan has talked of support for Medicare as a public option, and has said U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, has proposed such a plan he calls Medicare X.

In a questionnaire answer from Londrigan to The State Journal-Register before the March primary, she said in part of an answer about health care: "I believe we should introduce a 'public option' for health insurance that could compete with private insurance companies. There are good options, such as Medicare X and Medicaid-for-All being discussed, but we have to get the right representation in Congress to make a 'public option' reality."

She also said at a news conference last month that she wants to "fix what's broken" with the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, and favors offering, on a trial basis to rural areas and small business, Medicare as a public option -- and she cited Kaine as a sponsor.

The Congressional Leadership Fund notes that some reporting about the plan forwarded by Kaine and Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colorado, is considered a path to full single-payer. The headline of a story about the plan in for the progressive ThinkProgress organization last October was "The road to single-payer is being paved by two centrist Democrats."

The Illinois Republican Party has also been using the $32 trillion figure in literature it has sent out in the 13th Congressional District attacking Londrigan. That party organization also noted that Londrigan talked about Medicare X and Medicaid-for-All.

The Londrigan campaign says Medicaid and Medicare are fundamentally different programs, and expansion of Medicaid has helped cover hundreds of thousands of people in Illinois. It also says Londrigan has not supported any Medicare for all proposals.

Davis has strongly denied voting to erode protections for people with pre-existing conditions, and has noted that his wife is a cancer survivor.

"I have protected it every single time that I've cast votes," he said at an Oct. 15 debate.

He had voted for the House-passed American Health Care Act of 2017, which would have created "high-risk" insurance pools to cover people with pre-existing conditions, though the Congressional Budget Office estimated that, if the bill were signed into law, an additional 24 million people could be left uninsured. The Londrigan campaign has also cited how the AARP has said the GOP plan has an "age tax." In a May 4, 2017 AARP article, it said that under the GOP plan, "Premiums for older people could jump to five times the amount insurers charge younger consumers, from the limit of three times the younger consumers' rate under the current law, the Affordable Care Act."

Davis spokeswoman Phelps noted that the GOP plan includes language that "nothing in this act shall be construed as permitting health insurance issuers to limit access to health coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions." Phelps added that if states choose to apply for waivers from certain federal regulations to help lower costs, insurance companies would still be prevented from charging anyone in a waiver state higher premiums based on medical status as long as they choose to remain covered and don't forgo coverage for more than 63 days in a calendar year. Even in that circumstance, she said, increased premiums could only last for one year before going back to standard rates, during which time individuals would receive premium assistance through the waiver state's risk-sharing program.

Phelps said the GOP-backed AHCA was based on recent changes the state of Maine made to their individual market, which created indivisible risk pools and ended up saving seniors thousands on premium costs. The bill also provided $138 billion in federal funding for states to set up such programs.

In May 2017, a PolitiFact Florida review of the GOP plan found claims that it protected pre-existing conditions "mostly false."

Meanwhile, the Congressional Leadership Fund has a new TV ad that calls Londrigan a "liberal government insider who worked as a lobbyist, pushing more government spending," an apparent reference to her one-year -- 2013 -- registration as a lobbyist for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation. Londrigan was a part-time fundraiser for the association, and participated in some meetings to get state funds for a Lincoln collection. No funding ended up coming from the state.

The ad also calls Londrigan "part of the Madigan machine," adding that her husband's lobbying firm has given "nearly $50,000" to Madigan.

"Londrigan's husband even worked as the right-hand man for Rod Blagojevich," the narrator says. "You wouldn't send Madigan or Blagojevich to Congress. Why send liberal Betsy Londrigan?"

Tom Londrigan Jr., husband of the candidate, did serve for a time as chief legal counsel to Blagojevich, and was deputy general counsel in 2005 when he left the administration to join McGuireWoods LLP. The firm now has more than 1,100 lawyers in 23 offices. The firm is listed as giving Friends of Michael J. Madigan a total of $47,750 between 2006 and 2014, according to records on file with the State Board of Elections.

Contact Bernard Schoenburg: [email protected], 788-1540, twitter.com/bschoenburg.

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