Benjamin Ryan writes for the Washington Free Beacon about dubious claims from Michigan’s Democratic US Senate candidate.
“$700 MILLION MEDICAL DEBT ERASED.”
So boasted the first major TV ad for Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate campaign in Michigan—in a bright-yellow, all-caps caption blanketing the screen, as the voice-over said that El-Sayed “got rid of millions of dollars of medical debt.”
This claim referred to an initiative El-Sayed launched during his roughly two-year tenure as head of the Wayne County health department, which serves the Detroit suburbs. The county budgeted several million dollars from what it has described as a combination of federal American Rescue Plan Act funds and a local indigent health fund—to buy up low- and middle-income residents’ medical debt for a tiny fraction of the outstanding bills. The program applied to all of Wayne County, including Detroit, which has a 35 percent poverty rate.
How much medical debt did this program actually erase by the time El-Sayed, a progressive Democrat, left the health-department post in April 2025 to pursue the Senate seat?
$41.7 million.
That’s 17 times smaller than what the campaign ad boasted.
El-Sayed’s claims about erasing Michanders’ medical bills are fundamental to his campaign, as he champions “Medicare for All,” a pledge the progressive left has identified as a winner in the midterms. On Tuesday, El-Sayed released a new video about healthy eating, introducing himself as “an actual doctor,” a claim that is also contested.
To evaluate El-Sayed’s medical-debt-relief effort, the Washington Free Beacon reviewed numerous documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. These records reveal that the candidate’s frequent references to the debt-relief program have often been misleading or provably false.
Roxie Richner, an El-Sayed campaign spokeswoman, did not defend the vast disparity between the $41.7 million and $700 million figures when contacted by the Free Beacon. Instead, in a statement, Richner wrote: “Abdul is proud to have spearheaded a program that has erased tens of millions of dollars in medical debt for tens of thousands of Michigan families.”
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