Abdul El-Sayed’s Michigan Senate campaign blanketed the airwaves with a bold claim: “$700 MILLION MEDICAL DEBT ERASED.” County records and contractor reports tell a far smaller story.
The progressive Democrat and former Wayne County health department head used a major TV ad, campaign pages, and stump speeches to take credit for wiping out hundreds of millions in medical bills. A Washington Free Beacon review of FOIA documents found the program had canceled $41.7 million by the time he left the post in April 2025, roughly 17 times smaller than the ad’s headline figure.
Later tallies still fell well short. Bridge Michigan put the total near $57.4 million days after the ad debuted. A county dashboard later listed $95.8 million. Undue Medical Debt’s quarterly report through June 2026 showed $91.7 million canceled for just under 100,000 Wayne County residents. Undue spent a cumulative $1.1 million to reach that mark.
The gap between campaign rhetoric and results is now a live issue in a fractured Michigan Democratic primary, where voters are being asked to trust a candidate who sells sweeping numbers that the paperwork does not support.
El-Sayed’s inaugural major TV ad debuted June 16 with the caption “$700 MILLION MEDICAL DEBT ERASED” and a voice-over saying he “got rid of millions of dollars of medical debt.” The campaign’s “Meet Abdul” materials said he “spearheaded a program that will cancel up to $700 million in medical debt for 300,000 Michiganders over two years.”
On Sept. 5, he sharpened the pitch on the stump.
El-Sayed told the crowd:
“when we found out that our county ranked number eight for medical debt nationwide, and we realized that we could eliminate all of that debt for pennies on the dollar, we set aside $7 million to erase up to $700 million of medical debt in what is the largest medical debt erasure in Michigan state history.”
A Dec. 10, 2025 campaign news release repeated nearly the same $700 million and 300,000-resident language with three weeks left in the initial contract window. After Democratic rival Rep. Haley Stevens highlighted the shortfall, El-Sayed answered on July 14 by saying the program had “erased tens of millions of the hundreds of millions of medical debt our program is on track to erase for 300,000 Michiganders.”
The pattern is familiar in a primary already marked by party splits, including the exit that left the field clearer for the establishment-left fight as Mallory McMorrow left the Senate race and factions hardened.
Wayne County launched the debt-buy program in March 2024. Officials budgeted federal ARPA money and local indigent health funds, drawn in part from airport parking fees and cigarette taxes, to purchase medical debt at a fraction of face value through Undue Medical Debt, a New York City nonprofit.
The Wayne County Commission only ever approved $5 million. The original contract projected magnification up to $500 million in debt purchases. El-Sayed’s Nov. 1, 2023 email to colleagues detailed a $7 million budget, with 89 percent coming from local indigent funds. A December 2024 county release said an additional $2 million “could be added in the future should it be needed.”
Undue’s spokesman later said that extra $2 million “was never pursued” and that “as of now the grant remains for $5 million.” The $700 million projection rested on “anticipated provider participation” that did not fully materialize.
Undue’s report also stated the debt-cancellation program achieved just 8 percent of its ambitious dollar target during the original contract period. Legislative records showed local government authorized only one 12-month renewal option. Extending again would require a new mandate.
Wayne County communications director Matt Allen put the next step plainly: “Whether or not it’s to be extended, that’s still to be determined.” Republican commissioner Terry Marecki noted that “a lot of contracts, we amend them two or three times.” El-Sayed’s successor, Kennyle Johnson, told an Aug. 27 county hearing the department is “going to be looking to renew the contract with Undue Medical.”
Scale depended on major health systems selling debt portfolios. Most of the biggest players stayed out.
Independent journalist Kayleigh Lickliter reported in May that Henry Ford Health was the sole participant among the three top hospital systems and agreed to sell just $17 million in debt. Undue slides described Detroit Medical Center as “Unresponsive since March 2024; many follow-up attempts; Parent org said no.” Corewell was listed as “Not interested.” Karmanos Cancer Institute showed “No response from outreach attempts.”
On Oct. 31, 2024, Undue president and CEO Allison Sesso emailed El-Sayed that “we haven’t been able to get the following providers on board yet,” listing holdouts that included Ascension Michigan, and warned it was “prudent to discuss the size of the overall grant” ahead of the ARPA reallocation deadline of December 2024. El-Sayed personally lobbied Corewell and still failed to bring the system in.
A second-quarter purchase later bought a $29.2 million debt package for just under $250,000 from a single Wayne County federally qualified health center, a late jump that still left the program nowhere near the campaign’s headline number.
County Executive Warren C. Evans defended the help that did land, saying “this gave them relief that they hoped for and greatly needed in their lives at pennies on the dollar to the county.” That relief is real for the households reached. It is not $700 million erased under El-Sayed’s watch.
Campaign spokeswoman Roxie Richner did not defend the gulf between the $41.7 million figure at El-Sayed’s departure and the $700 million ad boast. She shifted to a softer frame.
Richner said:
“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.”
She added that as senator he would “fight to eliminate medical debt and guarantee affordable healthcare for every single American by passing Medicare for All,” while casting Republican opponent Mike Rogers as Big Pharma’s “champion.” Rogers’s campaign did not return a request for comment in the Free Beacon piece. Adrian Hemond, CEO of the bipartisan consultancy Grassroots Midwest, said the El-Sayed campaign “has been fairly fast and loose with the facts,” that Rogers “hasn’t been much better,” and that “campaigns know most voters are in no position to evaluate factual claims.”
Stevens had already drawn a brighter line. On July 13 she posted the Bridge Michigan reporting and answered that “aspirational goals aren’t real results.” She later escalated with a dedicated tracker. The Washington Examiner reported she launched Abdulfacts.com to catalog stretched claims ahead of debate night, including the $700 million medical-debt line, and said El-Sayed “tends to stretch the truth when it comes to his record.”
That intra-party clash fits a wider pattern of Democratic establishment money and messaging struggling to contain the left lane in Michigan, including the costly effort in which the Democratic establishment burned through $63.9 million and still failed to put him away.
The debt numbers are not the only credential under fire. El-Sayed repeatedly presents himself as “an actual doctor,” “doctor,” and “physician.” He holds an M.D. He never completed a residency and never held a license to practice medicine.
Fox News reported that license records show he never held a medical license in Michigan or New York, that his only hands-on clinical experience was a four-week rotation he later called “cosplaying as a doctor,” and that rivals say the pitch undercuts a core campaign theme. Michigan Democratic strategist Chris Dewitt said the public perception that he was at least at one point a licensed physician “apparently is not the case, and it blows up a big part of his campaign.” Jackson Boaz, speaking for Mallory McMorrow’s campaign, said El-Sayed “never held a medical license, never did his residency, never passed his boards, and never practiced medicine independently.”
In a primary already strained by ideology and trust, those gaps matter. Michigan Democrats have watched left-wing energy upend establishment favorites before, including the race in which a DSA-backed state lawmaker ousted a millionaire Democrat. El-Sayed’s backers include Bernie Sanders and the party’s activist left. Stevens carries more traditional institutional support. Voters are left to sort record from branding.
Wayne County’s program was never the only debt-buy effort in the state. Michigan ran a separate $4.5 million contract with Undue, launched in 2024 and slated through September 2028. On June 22, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced the state had purchased over $200 million in medical debt for more than 280,000 residents, a larger publicly touted haul than Wayne County’s under El-Sayed’s framing of “Michigan state history.”
Cook County, in the Chicago area, used $9 million in ARPA funds through Undue to cancel over $1 billion for nearly 800,000 residents. That comparison underscores how provider participation and execution, not slogans, drive results. Detroit’s 35 percent poverty rate and Wayne County’s medical-debt burden made relief politically attractive. They did not turn a $5 million authorized grant into a completed $700 million erasure.
Undue’s spokesman said the group has “had conversations with the county about what the program could look like moving forward, but we haven’t received a formal extension or new amendment” and “can’t speculate about what the county may decide to do before the end of the year.” He also said Undue continues “to engage providers and pursue opportunities to maximize the County’s investment” and anticipates “some additional purchases soon.” Future buys do not revise the figures already on the books when El-Sayed’s ads claimed the job was done at $700 million.
Nor do they settle open questions the records leave hanging: whether Wayne County will formally renew beyond the one authorized option, how much new money might follow, and whether major hospital systems that refused for years will ever sell large portfolios into the program.
By the Free Beacon’s FOIA baseline, $41.7 million was erased when El-Sayed left in April 2025. Bridge Michigan soon after tallied $57.4 million. The county dashboard later showed $95.8 million. Undue’s report through June 2026 listed $91.7 million canceled, about 100,000 residents helped, and $1.1 million spent. Henry Ford’s limited sale, Corewell’s refusal, DMC’s non-response, and Karmanos’s silence capped the upside. The commission’s $5 million approval, not a floating $7 million vision or an unpursued extra $2 million, set the real ceiling.
El-Sayed still markets the initiative as proof he delivers for working families and as a springboard for Medicare for All. Stevens calls the top-line figure aspirational theater. Outside analysts say both campaigns traffic in claims voters struggle to check. The documents are checkable. They show a modest, contractor-run buy-up that helped tens of thousands of people and never approached the number plastered across El-Sayed’s ad.
Other Senate races have already shown Democratic candidates distancing from national party brands when those brands become liabilities, including the Kansas example of a nominee who publicly told Kamala Harris to stay away. Michigan’s fight is more local and more personal: a left-wing doctor-branded candidate, an establishment congresswoman, and a record that keeps shrinking under inspection. Separate funding controversies around the Michigan lane, such as the backlash tied to a high-profile donation to an anti-Israel Senate candidate, only raise the premium on straight talk about what any contender has actually done in office.
Medical debt is a grinding burden. Canceling it at pennies on the dollar can help families who qualify. Selling voters a $700 million victory lap on a program that cleared a fraction of that total is a different act. It is the difference between governing math and campaign copy.
Taxpayers and primary voters can read the quarterly reports for themselves. When the ad says $700 million and the books say tens of millions, the honest label is not “erased.” It is oversold.
By signing up, you agree to receive newsletters and promotional content from American Frontline News and selected publications in the American Digest Media Network, operated with Patriot Mom Digest LLC, and you accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time.
By signing up, you agree to receive newsletters and promotional content from American Frontline News and selected publications in the American Digest Media Network, operated with Patriot Mom Digest LLC, and you accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time.