Here’s an interesting question: Does the candidate care more about reforming the system if they spend more on advertising their health insurance plan?
If you think the answer is yes, then that candidate is Illinois Senator Barack Obama.
Senator Obama has spent a staggering $113 million for advertising his health care plan on television, equaling 192,000 commercials in total for the year, reported Politico.
Even more, Obama has spent 68 percent of his total advertising budget on health care. This month alone, the Obama campaign increased spending to 86 percent of the total budget.
Those numbers, in a word, dwarf the spending by Senator John McCain’s campaign.
Senator McCain only could muster 11,300 commercials for health insurance reform this year — and he only spent $261,000 this month promoting his health reform plan on TV. In fact, Obama’s total spending on health care is $29 million more than McCain’s total bank roll for the entire campaign.
So, has Obama’s spending edge produced results?
According to a Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, 54 percent of voters have the same views as Obama when it comes to health insurance — only 25 percent say the same of McCain.
Needless to say, that’s a huge advantage for Senator Obama.
This shows that indeed the Democrat in this election is focused on health care reform, but it doesn’t necessarily mean he actually cares more than his Republican counterpart.
Why? Obama has the money to spend on whatever he wants. In September alone, Obama has raised an unprecedented $150 million — that’s $5 million a day!
McCain only has $84 million to spend in total for this whole General Election.
No wonder Obama can dominate television with his health care ads.
Click here to view the Kaiser tracking poll results for October in PDF format. Click here to learn more about how tracking polls are conducted.