Groups Take Health-Reform Debate to Airwaves

The increasingly heated fight over health-care legislation is saturating the summer airwaves, with groups on all sides of the debate pouring tens of millions of dollars into advertising campaigns designed to push the cause of reform forward, slow it down or stop it in its tracks. Drugmakers, labor unions, both national political parties and the sector currently under the heaviest fire -- health insurance companies -- are all weighing in with significant ad buys. Nationwide, more than $52 million has been spent this year on health-care reform-related ads, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group, setting the stage for what may be a record-breaking legislative battle. "This has the potential to certainly be the biggest [ever] as far as an advocacy advertising campaign goes," said Evan Tracey, CMAG's chief operating officer. Much of the spending has been focused on national cable news and the local Washington market, the best way to reach policymakers and opinion leaders in the capital. But as members of Congress leave for August recess, advertising money will follow them, as the target audience for health-care messages shifts from inside to outside the Beltway.