According to donation data, health care industry leaders favor Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump.
The most recent evidence in support of the trend is a review of campaign contributions made by 100 top health care executives by Modern Healthcare, which finds that 25 donated to Clinton, while none contributed to Trump.
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Among the executives who have contributed to the Democratic presidential ticket are the CEOs of Centene Corp, Duke University Health System, Independence Blue Cross, Adventist Health System, and Geisinger Health System.
The Modern Healthcare report aligns with more comprehensive analyses of contributions made during the 2016 election cycle to presidential campaigns, political parties and political action committees that support candidates.
According to Open Secrets, a campaign finance watchdog, Clinton has received just over $16 million during this cycle from health care industry employees, nearly eight times more than Trump, who has only taken in $2.2 million from health care employees.
Why is the situation so lopsided? Part of the reason is the politics of the health care sector have shifted in recent years. Doctors used to lean Republican, but are now more evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.
In addition, while the insurance industry certainly has its objections to the Affordable Care Act, many of its leaders would likely prefer to work with an administration that has signaled an interest in making changes to the law to ensure the insurers participating on the ACA marketplace are able to make a profit.
While Clinton's recent talk of establishing a public option government insurance program does not make the insurance industry happy, few political observers expect a public option to become a reality anytime soon, considering it can't even get support from a majority of Democrats in Congress.
But above all else, health care leaders likely favor Clinton this year for the same reason other major business interests are backing the Democratic nominee: They are wary of supporting Trump, whose lack of concrete policy has worried many typically right-leaning business leaders. Trump has often called for a "repeal and replace" approach to the ACA, but there has been a dearth of specifics.
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