Abdul El-Sayed Falsely Claims He ‘Erased’ $700 Million in Medical Debt: The Truth Is Far More Modest
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.
- ▪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
- ▪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.
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| Publication time | Thu, 01 Oct 2026 09:00:06 +0000 |
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Democrats Abdul El-Sayed Falsely Claims He ‘Erased’ $700 Million in Medical Debt: The Truth Is Far More Modest El-Sayed, an evangelist for ‘Medicare for All,’ has made multiple false and misleading claims about his achievements in public health Abdul El-Sayed (Sarah Rice/Getty Images) Benjamin Ryan October 1, 2026 image/svg+xml .st0{fill:none;stroke:#384f61;stroke-width:2;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:round;stroke-miterlimit:10;} .st1{fill:none;stroke:#384f61;stroke-width:2;stroke-linejoin:round;stroke-miterlimit:10;} "$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."…
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