Abdul El-Sayed blames slavery for healthcare woes says opposing taxpayer funded care for illegal immigrants is akin to racism
Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed claimed that slavery “profoundly” influenced the American health care system and that any public opposition to taxpayer-funded treatments for illegal immigrants would be a “deliberate, racist attack.”In a resurfaced 2022 interview, the doctor claimed slavery still weighs on America’s for-profit health care.“Racism continues to flummox our capacity as a society to invest in collective public goods” and remains “more powerful than the self-interest of … lower income white folks … in legacy confederacy states,” he said.The Michigan Democrat, who ran a failed campaign for governor of his state in 2018, went on to assert that “structural racism” was one of the main reasons the US hasn’t passed Medicare for All or another universal, government-run health care system.“Because in this country we have a privatized, partitioned health insurance system, the value of providing care, the reimbursement of providing care to different people’s bodies, differs based on how much money they make,” El-Sayed added.“And how much money they make because of structural racism differs based on the color of their skin,” he said.El-Sayed also claimed black bodies are valued at a lower rate than white children in US heatlhcare.
Opposition to Medicare for All is driven by “Reagan-esque trope[s]” and concerns about the care “being unearned,” El-Sayed said in the 2022 video.El-Sayed, who has called for abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, expressed support for taxpayers paying for illegal immigrants to get healthcare.“They’ll use examples of, you know, people who … are undocumented immigrants to this country,” he added, “and they’ll say, well, you know, your health care monies are going to pay for those undocumented folks — which will be a deliberate, racist attack.”Reps for El-Sayed’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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