Schiff Ad Takes On Rogan’s HMO Stand

Three weeks after Rep. James E. Rogan launched a cable television ad campaign in the superheated race for the 27th Congressional District, his challenger, Adam Schiff, is beginning a series of commercials on the same issue: health insurance reform.

The commercials for Schiff, a Democratic state senator from Burbank, begin running today on cable stations throughout the district, which covers several suburbs, including Pasadena, in northeast Los Angeles County.

The spot features poignant testimony from Pasadena resident Irene McDermott, outlining how her family’s health maintenance organization had refused to pay for her husband Phil’s chemotherapy treatments for cancer.

“We were desperate,” McDermott says in the commercial, adding that Schiff “helped force the HMO to provide the treatment that saved Phil’s life.”

Then McDermott says that Rogan voted against the Norwood Dingell HMO Patients’ Bill of Rights, a measure that passed the House last year with backing from medical professionals, senior citizens and consumer organizations.

Schiff is spending $22,000 to run the spot for a week, a campaign spokesman said.

Rogan (R-Glendale) angered Schiff and his supporters with a commercial, which began airing May 10, in which Rogan claimed to support HMO reforms and accused Schiff of favoring legislation that would drive up insurance premiums.

The Rogan campaign said it still is running the ad in half of the district. Meanwhile, it has begun running a second spot, which knocks Schiff for allegedly undermining such voter-approved initiatives as 1978’s Proposition 13.