- Republican Mike Rogers claims Abdul El-Sayed wants to raise taxes, ban private insurance as part of Medicare for All
- Experts say middle-class tax hikes would likely be necessary, but some Americans could end up saving money overall
- El-Sayed says he doesn’t want to ban private insurance but contends Medicare for All would make it unnecessary
Republican US Senate candidate Mike Rogers has sharply condemned Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s Medicare for All healthcare plan, saying it would take away private health insurance and increase taxes for Americans.
El-Sayed has made universal healthcare a central platform of his campaign. He says he wants to bring a single-payer system to the United States, guarantee healthcare for all and curb out-of-pocket costs. Similar proposals have repeatedly failed to advance in Congress under both political parties.
Creating a government-run healthcare system would be expensive. El-Sayed has said he’d try to target the rich. Experts say middle-class tax increases would likely be necessary, but some think overall healthcare costs would go down for lower- and middle-class Americans.
El-Sayed previously said Medicare for All would eliminate private insurance, but he’s backed off that stance, suggesting Congress could make private insurance unnecessary without the need to ban it.
In recent weeks, Rogers and El-Sayed have traded blows in the media and on social media over each other’s healthcare plans.
Rogers has proposed healthcare policies that would require insurance companies to provide pricing information up front and expand access to “TrumpRx,” a government website set up by the second Trump administration that provides discounts for prescription drugs.
Rogers’ claims about Medicare for All are among many that Bridge Michigan is fact checking in the US Senate race, including Rogers’ ties to the pharmaceutical industry. The winner of the Nov. 3 election will succeed retiring US Sen. Gary Peters.
New taxes?
In campaign materials, Rogers has claimed that El-Sayed’s Medicare for All plan will raise taxes and “break our healthcare system.” On Aug. 27, Rogers wrote on X, “Conman Abdul’s plan for Medicare for All really means nothing for you.”
The Rogers campaign has promoted “leaked audio” of El-Sayed saying that healthcare will become more expensive. That audio is from a podcast called Sense and Sustainability that was published 15 years ago.
While Rogers is correct that funding Medicare for All would likely require new taxes, he leaves out some information about El-Sayed’s approach, overall costs and healthcare expenditures.
In 2020, the nonpartisan Urban Institute estimated that US Sen. Bernie Sanders’ version of Medicare for All would cost the federal government $34 trillion over a 10-year period. This year, John Holahan, a fellow at the Urban Institute, told Bridge that a single-payer healthcare plan could now cost close to double that 2020 estimate, due to inflation.
But some experts say total healthcare spending in the US could fall under Medicare for All, and some Americans could ultimately save money. It would largely depend on how a universal healthcare system is financed, which El-Sayed has not specified in his proposal.
In 2019, the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concluded that it was “clear that taxes on the middle class would have to rise in order to pay for” Medicare for All, estimating taxes on the wealthy and businesses would only cover about 40% of all costs.
But, the group said, “higher taxes don’t necessarily mean higher costs, and depending on the details many households could end up paying less in taxes under Medicare for All than they currently pay in premiums and cost sharing.”
That same year, the Urban Institute concluded that a single-payer healthcare plan could ultimately result in reduced costs for middle-class families.
El-Sayed’s campaign did not answer a question about how he’d try to pay for Medicare for All, but he recently said he’d “hope” to avoid raising taxes on most Michigan families, including those earning around $100,000 a year.
“The choice in this race could not be clearer for Michiganders when it comes to who they can trust to bring down healthcare costs,” campaign spokesperson Cole Wozniak wrote in a statement to Bridge Michigan. “Dr. Abdul El-Sayed wrote the book on Medicare for All and will fight to bring down costs and guarantee affordable healthcare for every single American.”
What about private insurance?
Rogers claims El-Sayed’s healthcare proposal would eliminate private insurance. His campaign cites a 2020 podcast in which El-Sayed said Medicare for All “does away with the private insurance market.”
However, El-Sayed has since changed his position on the private health insurance market.
His campaign website says: “Medicare for All does not have to ban additional private insurance through unions or employers, although Medicare for All should make those choices redundant and unnecessary.”
El-Sayed frequently campaigns with Sanders, whose Medicare for All proposal would largely eliminate private insurance. But El-Sayed distanced himself from that approach in the Democratic primary: “Medicare for All is guaranteed baseline government health insurance,” he said in January. “If you like your insurance from your employer or from your union, that can still be there for you.”
Bridge Michigan asked Rogers’ campaign if it consulted policy experts to assess El-Sayed’s healthcare plan and how it would impact Americans with private insurance coverage. Spokesperson Alyssa Brouillet instead asked if El-Sayed had consulted Canada about that country’s “train wreck” system.
“How about Michiganders with chronic illness, like the lady at our press conference, who would lose her private health insurance, lose her doctor, and see her costs increase? Maybe Bridge Michigan should start there,” Brouillet said, referencing Chére Bernhard, who spoke about her chronic illness at a Rogers campaign press conference on Sept. 19.
Bottom line
Rogers’ claim that a Medicare for All plan would raise taxes is likely correct, although some experts predict overall costs could go down for some families.
El-Sayed has said he does not want to ban private insurance but would try to make it unnecessary.
Regardless, sweeping changes to healthcare laws would require approval from both chambers of Congress and the president. As a senator, either El-Sayed or Rogers would have to work collaboratively with other lawmakers and the president to reform the healthcare system.
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