Paramedics Jonathan Paz (center) and Bruno Fernandini (right) wheel a patient to the X-ray room at the University of Miami Hospital's Emergency Department on April 30, 2012 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

It’s a very well-produced ad. Two heroic paramedics race against the clock to load a patient into an ambulance and rush her to the hospital. Her vitals are at dangerously low levels, she might not survive the ride.

But when the paramedics get their patient to the hospital, it’s dark inside, except for just enough light to see there are no other people there. No doctors, no nurses, no orderlies, no patients, no contractors, no visitors, no one at all, except for the three people who just came in.

It’s not something that would realistically happen in real life, but it is a powerful metaphor for what would supposedly happen if Congress approves government rate setting, a limit on how much health care providers can charge out-of-network patients.

Supposedly, government rate setting would cause many hospitals to discharge all their patients, lay off their staff and turn off the lights. At least according to “Doctor Patient Unity.”

The ad urges you to call Senator Gary Peters (D-Michigan) and tell him to vote against government rate setting. The ad also includes the URL of a very well-designed website.

The group also have a simpler ad that dispenses the Hollywood theatrics and just has a woman telling you government rate setting is bad, so call Peters. Similar ads are running in a few other states with senators up for re-election next year.

Peters knows I contact him about a lot of different issues. I have been writing to him ever since he was a congressman representing an extremely gerrymandered district in metro Detroit (can’t even say Wayne County).

But usually I have an understanding of the issue that goes at least a little bit beyond that I saw a scary ad on TV and now I’m worried that if I have an accident, paramedics are going to wheel me into an empty hospital.

And right now I don’t even know what government rate setting is, nor why Doctor Patient Unity is so dead set against it. Who are they? I don’t know that either, much less whether their self-interest in the matter is healthy or not.

I don’t doubt that there indeed are patients in the group, because probably everyone is a patient at some points in their lives. The group might even have doctors.

But who provides the money for these professionally polished ads that run in primetime? I also saw the ad with the ambulance right after Meet the Press yesterday.

I asked a Daily Kos staffer about Doctor Patient Unity, and she didn’t know either, but she did direct me to a couple of very informative articles. Karl Evers-Hillstrom reports for OpenSecrets.org that

A secretive “dark money” group, which claims to represent doctors and patients, engaged in a TV advertising blitz totaling at least $2.3 million from late July through mid-August. Its ads urge vulnerable senators to reject a proposal meant to cut down on expensive surprise medical bills. Doctor Patient Unity, an obscure group that doesn’t list its members or disclose its funding, was incorporated in Virginia on July 23. Just a few days later, it ran its first TV ads during CNN’s broadcast of the Democratic presidential debate, a preview of the multi-million dollar ad blitz that would soon follow.

I don’t really remember seeing ads during the debates, and perhaps not many other people paid attention to the ads. So they’ve been running the ads at other times in the past couple of weeks on the major broadcast and cable channels.

You wouldn’t have seen these ads while watching “supplementary” TV channels like Heroes & Icons, which reruns House, JAG, Monk, all the Star Trek series (except Star Trek: Discovery), etc. Instead you would see ads for Consumer Cellular, the Colonial Penn program, catheters, etc.

I’ve seen the ads on the NBC and CBS affiliates here in Detroit. But to know where else the ads are running, well, that takes some digging.

Doctor Patient Unity targeted at least 11 senators, all of whom face tough reelection battles in 2020, with ads in their respective home states, according to OpenSecrets ad data and FCC records. Because such contracts are filed sporadically throughout the year by broadcasters, the data represents only filings submitted to the FCC through the present date and could change as new documents are processed. The list includes highly endangered senators in toss-up races such as Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), Doug Jones (D-Ala.) and Martha McSally (R-Ariz.). Several of the senators mentioned are actively involved in legislation meant to address surprise medical bills. “This is kind of putting these senators, all of whom are at least somewhat vulnerable in a reelection campaign, on notice that this group is willing to run attack ads against them — potentially willing to spend millions of dollars to defeat them — if they don’t vote in the correct way on this legislation,” said Travis Ridout, professor at Washington State University and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political ads.

The article includes a bar graph with low-ball estimates of how much the group has spent on ads targeting each senator. Peters is not listed, but I don’t know if that’s because the Michigan ad buy was smaller or because the data for Michigan was not available at the time Evers-Hillstrom wrote the article.

I emphasize that the bill that has Doctor Patient Unity so worried is a bipartisan effort.

Senators are looking at the Lower Health Care Costs Act, sponsored by Senate Health Committee leaders Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), as the bipartisan solution to the problem. The legislation would set the rates at which insurers would reimburse providers for out-of-network emergency care, a proposal widely opposed by hospital and physician groups. The bill, which sailed through the committee that Sens. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Jones currently sit on, is a top priority for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Doctor Patient Unity did not respond to a request for comment regarding its funding. But the group uses similar language to some of the biggest healthcare organizations opposed to the “rate setting” introduced by a bipartisan group of senators.

There are plenty of good reasons to vote against “Moscow” Mitch McConnell and Kavanaugh apologist Collins. Even if McConnell and Collins vote the right way on this issue (whatever that might be), they still need to get voted out of the Senate, in my opinion.

I think I’ll be writing to Senator Peters about something or other some time soon. But most likely not about government rate setting.

I still don’t know enough about it to have a valid opinion on it, I’ve only skimmed S. 1895 (currently a mess of insertions and strikethroughs), but I’m inclined to oppose a dark money group’s opinion.

It’s entirely possible that Peters will vote on this in a different way than I would like him to. But that and the few other issues I’ve disagreed with him hardly justify not voting for his re-election.

The best hope for doctors and patients alike is with a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, and a Democrat as president. With a Republican majority, the best we can hope for is for things to not get worse.

So maybe S. 1895 would just be a very tiny preview of Medicare For All. And maybe in 2021, as President Kamala Harris waits for Medicare For All to land on her desk, Doctor Patient Unity will run ads of quality comparable to major studio zombie movies.