Warner Senate campaign calls out Gillespie ad as misleading

Today Ed Gillespie continued his negative campaign with a desperate attack ad using made-up numbers to mislead voters on Senator Mark Warner’s record.

“If Ed Gillespie is truly concerned with offering solutions rather than soundbites, he would join Senator Warner in supporting bipartisan legislation in the General Assembly to allow non-compliant plans to be extended an additional two years, beyond the initial one-year extension Sen. Warner already secured,” said David Turner, a spokesman for the campaign.

Gillespie has been airing misleading negative attack ads for weeks. This comes as no surprise as Gillespie has a history of relying on negative campaigning. He helped to found the Super PAC American Crossroads which spent more than $170 million on negative ads for the 2012 elections alone.

The ad uses a number for Virginians with non-compliant plans that the head of Virginia’s health insurance industry has called “completely made up.” The ad also ignores that Senator Warner has worked to extend these plans and fix the Affordable Care Act:

• Senator Warner urged the Insurance Commissioner to accept the federal policy of allowing insurance companies to extend non-compliant plans by one year. The Insurance Commissioner accepted.
• Senator Warner urged HHS Secretary Sebelius to allow people with non-compliant plans to access catastrophic plans, to give them more and cheaper options for coverage, which the Secretary then agreed to do.
• Senator Warner supports the bipartisan General Assembly legislation that allows non-compliant plans to be extended an additional two years, as the federal government allows and states like North Carolina have done.
• Senator Warner has offered legislation to create a new Copper Plan, to give Virginians cheaper options on the exchange.
• Senator Warner has proposed lifting the bar for the employer mandate from 50 to 100 employees, easing reporting requirements, and delaying the mandate by one year.

Senator Warner has legislation to allow insurance companies to sell products across state lines.

Ed Gillespie, meanwhile, has not revealed a health care plan beyond repeal, which would result in insurance companies once again being allowed to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. The Richmond Times Dispatch said that Gillespie’s repeal would lead to 260,00 Virginians who have health insurance through the law losing their coverage.