U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed joined U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib and community members Saturday as part of his campaign that has largely focused on his push to reform American healthcare he calls a broken system.
Tlaib announced her endorsement of El-Sayed during the hour-long town hall the same day the former county health administrator received an endorsement from Rev. Horace Sheffield, the pastor at New Destiny Christian Fellowship. Sheffield is Detroit Mayor-elect Mary Sheffield’s father.
In interviews after the event, El-Sayed said he was “really grateful” to have earned the endorsement from Sheffield, who told Michigan Chronicle in a statement we are living in a unique political environment.
“In an era unlike anything we have ever seen in terms of the massive and intentional social and economic impact upon families, farmers, municipalities, and citizens we can ill afford to have anyone other that Abdul El-Sayed in the US Senate to protect us, and who will not only fight for us but will also win for us,” Sheffield said.
Sheffield announced his endorsement on his radio show Saturday, where El-Sayed was one of his guests.
“Our job is to keep getting folks on the ground here in Detroit, keep reaching out, building the kind of grassroots, people oriented campaign that inspires people to want to get involved,” El-Sayed said.
Tlaib and El-Sayed during the town hall event Saturday answered questions from supporters and skeptics.
“I would rather have a health care system, where the winners are the people and the losers are the corporations,” El-Sayed told supporters at the community college campus.
The stop at Wayne Community College District’s northwest campus on Outer Drive is part of El-Sayed’s statewide tour pitching a single-payer, government health insurance system that would provide universal coverage to all Americans.
The Democratic primary election for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat is being closely watched by party insiders across the nation looking for the template for energizing Democratic voters.
In the three way primary to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, El-Sayed is running against state Sen. Mallory McCmorrow, D-Royal Oak, and U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens.
McMorrow and Stevens, particularly the latter, are considered to the right of El-Sayed, whose campaign earlier this summer compared him to New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.
At one point during the town hall Saturday, a woman who asked Tlaib why focus on the push for Medicare for All while tax credits for the Affordable Care Act hang in the balance.
“We can do both — people need the tax credits extended,” Tlaib said. “People say ‘We have the ACA’ but that’s not enough. We need something else to replace it because a lot of my families that do get sick on ACA are still paying a lot more than they should.”
Supporters at the town hall pointed to medical debt is as overwhelming burden. One person who came Saturday said her pregnancy bankrupted her.
“Why do we see all these GoFundMe pages? Because yes, some people are covered, but they’re covered with less,” Tlaib said. She called the Affordable Care Act has “a bandaid, and Republicans are about to rip the bandaid off.”
El-Sayed and Tlaib said that even though the ACA had benefited some, it was crafted with the healthcare industry.
Arthur Harrington, a candidate for state house in the 9th District, asked the Congresswoman and candidate what he could do to support healthcare in the Legislature.
El-Sayed pointed to a legislative package sponsored by State Rep. Carrie Rheingans, D-Ann Arbor, that would bring universal, publicly funded health care to every Michigan resident.
“Be wiling to say what you’re for and take it to the streets,” El-Sayed told Harrington. “Have those conversations and win over hearts and minds on the truth.”
MiCare would maintain and add to today’s current health care provider network, aiming to bringing savings to patients, employers, and providers by reducing administrative costs.
El-Sayed’s campaign has been taking medical debt head on. It partnered with Undue Medical Debt, a national nonprofit that purchases medical debt in bulk from hospitals and collection agencies at discounts, and erases them for free.
The organization previously partnered with Wayne County while El-Sayed served as the Wayne County health director to wipe out $27 million in outstanding medical debt for more than 46,000 county residents. The county invested $5 million in the collaboration.
He explained Medicare for all as “Not government healthcare,” but “government health insurance.”
“It gets to be the negotiator on everyone’s behalf,” El-Sayed said. “Because it’s there for everyone, it pushes back on rising costs, and it’s there for you in every circumstance.”
