Ohio Senate Race: Health Costs and Coverage Claims

Ad spending in Ohio's U.S. Senate race passed $500 million this week, with the tracking firm AdImpact recording the total on Oct. 27, including future reservations. The contest between incumbent Republican Sen. Jon Husted and Democrat Sherrod Brown ranks among the costliest Senate races in the country.

Husted's campaign is airing an October advertisement from the No Going Back PAC that targets Brown's record on insurance. The spot says Brown has protected big insurance and its profits for decades. It claims Brown received billions for the industry while the industry gave him hundreds of thousands.

The advertisement rests on an assertion that Brown took $240,000 from insurance companies in exchange for supporting policies that helped them. The source material states the claim carries no evidence. Brown, who lost his 2024 reelection bid and is running to return to the Senate, has posted his own counterattack. In an August speech excerpt published to his Facebook page, Brown said Husted voted nine times against lowering health insurance premiums and has taken $700,000 from the same companies raising those premiums.

Premium costs in Ohio have climbed. Private health insurance premiums are projected to rise more than 10%, according to healthinsurance.org. Marketplace plans under the Affordable Care Act rose an average of 18% this year, the Health Policy Institute of Ohio reported. Enrollment in those marketplace plans fell to 161,000 fewer Ohioans in February 2026 compared with a year earlier, a drop of 32.4%. The decline followed the end of enhanced federal ACA subsidies at the close of 2025, which raised costs for many buyers.

Brown said in December that the end of those subsidies, along with changes to Medicaid, would cost 490,000 Ohioans their coverage over ten years. In an interview, he framed the scale of the loss against a familiar Ohio venue. "People who have lost their health insurance because of Jon Husted's vote could fill Ohio Stadium almost five times over," Brown said.

Husted has pointed the other way. In a December interview, he said Brown's Senate votes created the problems now facing the state's health care system. "I want Ohioans to know I'm trying to fix his his mistakes," Husted said, adding that he is working across party lines on renewing the premium tax credit while also targeting fraud in the system.

Drug prices are the other front. Brown said at an August campaign stop in Steubenville, captured by C-SPAN, that he wants caps on prescription costs modeled on the insulin cap for Medicare recipients and federal negotiation of prices, the way the VA does it. Husted has sponsored a bill he says would lower prices by expanding the range of drugs sold over the counter, and he has pushed anti-fraud provisions he says reduce improper payments.

In a June telephone town hall, Husted said a provision in last year's Working Families Tax Cuts Act, formerly called the One Big Beautiful Bill, requires states to check eligibility more often. He estimated the change would save billions of dollars. More than three million Ohioans are on Medicaid. Advocates say the act could cut more than half a million from the state's Medicaid rolls. Husted has praised the act's economic effects; Brown cited his opposition to it as part of his reason for running.

Ohio's private health insurance premiums are expected to rise more than 10%.