As Jack King­ston runs for Sen­ate in Geor­gia, the vet­er­an Re­pub­lic­an con­gress­man has needled his GOP primary op­pon­ents over the is­sue of tax­pay­er-fun­ded health in­sur­ance sub­sides.

“Jack,” his cam­paign wrote in a memo last fall, “is the only can­did­ate in this race that has voted to elim­in­ate tax­pay­er-fun­ded in­sur­ance sub­sidies for Mem­bers of Con­gress and their staffs.”

But what the memo didn’t men­tion — and what King­ston doesn’t talk about on the trail — is that Geor­gia tax­pay­ers are foot­ing as much as 75 per­cent of the bill for his own health in­sur­ance. That’s be­cause King­ston, 58, re­ceives health cov­er­age through a plush pack­age that has al­lowed him ac­cess to a life­time of sub­sid­ized health be­ne­fits due to his past ser­vice in the Geor­gia state­house.

Former state le­gis­lat­ors pay “ap­prox­im­ately 25 per­cent of the cost” of their health in­sur­ance, said Pamela Keene, a spokes­wo­man for the Geor­gia De­part­ment of Com­munity Health.

“The rest is paid by the state,” she said.

Former le­gis­lat­ors are eli­gible after eight years of ser­vice, Keene said. King­ston meets that min­im­um; he was in of­fice from 1985 to 1993.

King­ston has re­ceived this state-sup­por­ted health in­sur­ance for more than two dec­ades, since the month he joined the Con­gress in Janu­ary 1993, ac­cord­ing to fin­an­cial dis­clos­ure forms he has filed with the House.

The King­ston cam­paign saw noth­ing hy­po­crit­ic­al in the con­gress­man’s ac­cept­ance of health sub­sides from his time in the Le­gis­lature.

“The State of Geor­gia health care plan is ad­min­istered [in] Geor­gia. He has no vote on the rules of the plan and abides by those es­tab­lished by state law­makers,” said King­ston spokes­man Chris Craw­ford in an email. “He chose to stay on the Geor­gia plan when he first came to Con­gress be­cause he did not want any part of the Po­tom­ac life­style.”

King­ston is locked in one of the hot­test and most crowded Sen­ate Re­pub­lic­an primar­ies in the na­tion. The Geor­gia race fea­tures five top-tier can­did­ates in­clud­ing King­ston; two phys­i­cian-con­gress­men, Phil Gin­grey and Paul Broun; former Geor­gia Sec­ret­ary of State Kar­en Han­del; and busi­ness­man Dav­id Per­due, a cous­in of the former gov­ernor.

The win­ner is ex­pec­ted to face Demo­crat Michelle Nunn, the daugh­ter of former Sen. Sam Nunn, in what most ana­lysts be­lieve is the Demo­crat­ic Party’s best shot at win­ning a Re­pub­lic­an-held Sen­ate seat in 2014.

The GOP primary will be held on May 20, with a run­off two months later.

The early part of the race has turned on who op­poses Obama­care the most, even as all the lead­ing Re­pub­lic­ans have vowed re­peal. Gin­grey has prom­ised to re­peal the law “or go home.” Broun has labeled Obama­care the “flaw of the land.” And Han­del fea­tured it in her first ra­dio ad.

“Only in Wash­ing­ton can con­gress­men cam­paign against Obama­care while re­ceiv­ing spe­cial treat­ment and thou­sands in tax­pay­er sub­sidies that the rest of us don’t get,” Han­del said in the ad.

To push back against such at­tacks, King­ston has said that he doesn’t ac­cept fed­er­al health in­sur­ance. He glosses over his tax­pay­er-fun­ded state health be­ne­fits.

“Now I want to say this: I ac­tu­ally have nev­er taken the fed­er­al health care. So I have nev­er taken this sub­sidy which is the cen­ter of the con­tro­versy,” he said in a ra­dio in­ter­view last year. King­ston went on to say that “end­ing that sub­sidy would be help­ful.”