Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton officially took the gloves off in her fight against the insurance industry with a new campaign ad centered on healthcare issues.
In the television spot, which was released Saturday and is being aired in New Hampshire and Iowa, Clinton highlights her history of work on healthcare and promises that one of her priorities as president will be “taking on insurance companies to bring down drug prices.”
The ad marks one of Clinton’s first direct assertions that insurance companies are to blame for rising drug prices. In the past, she has joined other presidential candidates in saying pharmaceutical companies need to do more in order to bring down prices on drugs for consumers.
If elected, Clinton says that in addition to pushing for such reforms, she will also advocate a $250 per month cap on out-of-pocket drug expenses – a provision that would have to be offered by health insurers.
Clinton has gone after health insurance companies previously in her campaign, but has focused her remarks primarily on major health insurance mergers such as those between Anthem and Cigna, and Humana and Aetna.
The two blockbuster deals comprise nearly $100 billion and could potentially undermine competition in the health insurance space – and thus go against one of the major tenets of the Affordable Care Act, Clinton has maintained.
“These mergers should be scrutinized very closely with an eye to preventing the undue concentration that they appear to create,” she said in a statement. “I am very skeptical of the claim that consumers will benefit from them because the evidence from careful studies shows that too often the companies end up pocketing profits rather than passing savings to consumers.”
The former Secretary of State further vowed to increase regulatory scrutiny if elected president.
"I would strengthen the antitrust enforcement arms of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission and appoint aggressive regulators to take on troubling concentration wherever it occurs in the health care industry," she said.
Clinton’s new ad comes in the months leading up to primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire.
