Pro-Obamacare group urging Rick Scott to support coronavirus relief

Image via AP.

An organization established to support the Affordable Care Act is running a digital advertising campaign urging people to persuade Republican Sen. Rick Scott to support emergency funding for health care.

Save My Care, a self-described grassroots organization established in 2016, is running the ads on social media targeting the Senator as Congress renews activity on a new relief bill to address the increasing coronavirus crisis.

The ads call for Scott to support federal funding for hospitals and frontline health care workers, and for unemployment insurance, relief areas that Democrats have pushed hard since May. Republicans have been reluctant to endorse those areas. In a news release, Save My Care accuses Scott of dragging his feet and failing “to provide meaningful relief for those suffering the health and economic consequences of the pandemic.”

On Thursday, the United States recorded more than 3,100 COVID-19 deaths in a single day, obliterating the record set last spring, while the number of Americans hospitalized with the virus has eclipsed 100,000 for the first time and new cases have begun topping 200,000 a day.

While the third wave of the pandemic has not yet inundated Florida, many Northern states are seeing health care workers and hospitals overwhelmed.

Florida’s other Republican Senator, Marco Rubio, has expressed some support for the package now being negotiated between House Democrats and Senate Republicans. Scott, meanwhile, has signaled opposition.

“Florida’s health care heroes need help now,” the digital ad reads. “We need Emergency Funding for: Medicaid, Unemployment Insurance, Support for Hospitals. Tell Senator Rick Scott: Increase funding for Florida health care now.”

The organization recently commissioned a poll. In announcing the ads, Save My Care cited results that said 61% of respondents prefer the Democrats’ proposals to spread more coronavirus relief money further, including into aiding the health care industry and providing assistance to people who lost their health care funding.

“The pandemic has put a strain on state and local budgets, and more funding for state Medicaid programs, hospitals, and nursing homes and home care workers, and health care workers and their families is urgently needed,” the organization stated in the news release.