Roger Marshall's medical practice in Great Bend, Kansas, took more than 700 of its own patients to court over unpaid bills. At least 81 of them were arrested after missing a court date. We laid out that record when The New York Times broke it earlier this month.
Now one of those patients is on TV. And Roger Marshall wants her taken off.
On Monday, September 28, Marshall's lawyers sent his Democratic opponent, the Rev. Adam Hamilton, a cease-and-desist letter calling Hamilton's new ad "defamatory," the Kansas Reflector reported. The letter gave the campaign 24 hours to pull the ad, publish a retraction and apologize. Marshall went further on Instagram: "This ad is a complete lie."
Read the letter's complaints as the Reflector reports them, though, and something is missing. It does not deny that Marshall's practice sued her. It does not deny she was arrested. It argues about why.
Who Meischa Zimmerman is
Meischa Zimmerman opens the ad. She says she was arrested while eight months pregnant for missing a $50 payment to Marshall, and that she was handcuffed in front of her 2-year-old daughter.
Here is what the court records show, according to the Reflector:
- Heartland Regional OBGYN, the practice where Marshall worked, opened a case against her in December 2009.
- She owed nearly $3,600, at 18% interest.
- She was paying roughly $50 a month.
- She was first arrested in 2011.
"Roger Marshall preyed on the low-income families of Kansas," she says in the ad.
What Marshall's lawyers dispute
The letter makes three complaints, according to the Reflector:
- Zimmerman wasn't arrested for missing a payment. She was arrested for failing to appear in court.
- The ad focuses on a $50 bill rather than the full amount she owed.
- The arrest shouldn't have surprised her, because court records show she "was called to court in three different counties by eight different businesses over a multi-year period, including by a different hospital and in an eviction proceeding."
"The unmistakable message to a reasonable viewer is that Senator Marshall caused a pregnant patient to be arrested and jailed for missing a single $50 payment," the letter says. "That message is false in every material respect."
Look at what the letter is actually saying. The woman his practice sued was so broke that eight different businesses were taking her to court, including over an eviction. Part of the senator's defense is that his practice was only one of the people chasing her.
"Failure to appear" is how it works
Marshall's lawyers say Zimmerman was arrested for missing court, not for missing a payment. That is how every one of the 81 arrests happened.
When a patient in a debt case missed a hearing, the side that sued them could ask a judge for a warrant. The New York Times found Marshall's practice asked for them again and again — which is how at least 81 of his patients ended up arrested.
When the Times story broke, Marshall's spokeswoman said "judges issue warrants when people repeatedly miss court dates, not doctors." The new letter makes the same move. A judge signs the warrant. But no judge goes looking for a woman who owes a doctor $3,600. The practice has to sue her first, and then has to ask.
Hamilton's spokesman, Tyson Brody, said "not once" had Marshall disputed Zimmerman's story "that his lawyers had her arrested in front of her children." The letter, as the Reflector describes it, doesn't.
Why he wants it gone
The ad is spreading. It had been viewed more than 1 million times on X, and Hamilton's campaign spent at least $7,500 to run it to YouTube viewers between 165,000 and 280,000 times from Friday to Monday.
And the race has moved. What forecasters once treated as a safe Republican seat has drifted toward a toss-up, the Reflector notes, since Hamilton won the Democratic primary in August.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee called the ad "a manufactured hit piece." But the story in it wasn't manufactured by Adam Hamilton. It came out of Kansas court files, and the Times found hundreds more like it.
It fits how Marshall has talked about patients who go without care. In 2017, as a House member, he told the health news site STAT that "there is a group of people that just don't want health care and aren't going to take care of themselves."
What the record shows
Roger Marshall's lawyers want an ad pulled that shows one of the more than 700 patients his practice sued. Court records show his practice took Meischa Zimmerman to court in 2009 over nearly $3,600 at 18% interest, and she was arrested in 2011 for missing court. His letter calls the ad false — but its complaints are about why she was arrested, not whether his practice sued her or whether she was arrested. One of its defenses is that other businesses were taking her to court too.
