When President Donald Trump waded into Kansas’ fiery Senate race this week on behalf of Republican incumbent Roger Marshall, he was responding to the stories of women. Marshall’s Democratic opponent, pastor Adam Hamilton, has been highlighting stories of Marshall’s former patients in an effort to cast the senator as an unfit representative. With early voting underway and polls suggesting an unusually tight race in the ruby red state that could help determine Senate control, the stories of women and mothers are front and center.
The New York Times reported last month that Marshall’s lawyers repeatedly pursued punitive measures to collect payments from patients who received services such as Cesarean sections, miscarriage care and hysterectomies. The lawsuits against patients were instigated before Marshall’s election to the Senate in 2020. Marshall regularly charged an 18 percent annual interest rate for unpaid bills, a highly unusual sum for doctors in the state.
In some cases, women were arrested over missed court dates. His campaign website refers to him as “Doc Marshall” and highlights his background delivering babies in a rural part of the state where he was often “the only OB-GYN in the area.” In one picture, a scrubs-clad Marshall drapes a stethoscope around his neck, holding one newborn in each arm. The Marshall campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson defended his and his hospital’s billing practices in the initial report by The New York Times. Polling released by the Hamilton campaign suggests these stories may be influencing Kansas voters, with Marshall’s favorability ratings declining this fall after reports of his lawsuits became public. Open-ended survey responses published by GBAO Strategies, a liberal research firm hired by Hamilton’s campaign, included statements from voters such as: “He arrests people for $50,” “Collecting bills from a poor woman who apparently gave birth and then had her arrested for nonpayment” and “Bro is literally robbing poor women.” In one advertisement from the Hamilton campaign, a woman named Meischa Zimmerman describes being eight months pregnant and jailed after missing a payment for care she received from Marshall.
State court records show that Zimmerman was paying roughly $50 per month for a bill of over $3,500 before interest. He’s absolutely profiting from it,” Zimmerman said in the ad. In a digital video the campaign posted online this month, a woman named Destiny holds a toddler while describing a medical bill she received more than 10 years ago after getting an emergency appendectomy at a hospital co-owned by Marshall.
And in yet another ad, a lineup of physicians describe Marshall’s reported billing practices as “predatory,” “egregious” and “obscene.” “Doctors see firsthand the healthcare system is broken,” one doctor says to the camera. Marshall has challenged his opponent’s campaign messaging. A lawyer for the senator issued a cease-and-desist warning to the Hamilton campaign after it ran the ad; Marshall has argued that Zimmerman was not jailed for missing a single $50 payment.
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