Unearthed audio exposes stunning El-Sayed admission about his healthcare pitch
Leo Briceno
Fox News
September 17, 2026
Over a decade before becoming the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed acknowledged that his vision for healthcare would require different costs for patients depending on wealth status.
“We’re actually just going to give other people access to what you have and make yours more expensive. We’re not asking you to lose access. We’re just making yours more expensive. And not that much so, in fact. We’re making it marginally more expensive,” El-Sayed said in a 2011 appearance on the “Sense and Sustainability” podcast.
His resurfaced comments, made as part of a program on inequalities in healthcare, reveal El-Sayed’s long-standing thinking behind his proposed policy changes.
Fifteen years later, El-Sayed has made an expansion of healthcare in the U.S. a key part of his platform as he wages a bid to succeed retiring Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich.
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“Medicare-for-all means no premium, no co-pay, no deductible. Doesn’t matter if you get a job, lose a job, turn 26, turn 65, get married, get divorced — it is there for you,” El-Sayed said in a post to X earlier this year.
Skeptics of the plan argue it is too expensive and does little to address existing inefficiencies in the American healthcare system.
In 2019, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., took to the Senate floor to blast the idea, calling it a straitjacket solution that would undermine health care quality.
“The [Congressional Budget Office] projects in its report on a single-payer plan that government spending on health care would increase substantially. They go on to say to cover the massive cost of government-run care, income taxes would have to at least double. Income taxes, American families — at least double,” Barrasso said.
“Mark my words, Medicare-for-all would soon become Medicare for none.”
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