Abdul El-Sayed has not yet taken his seat in the Senate, but he is already making President Donald Trump an offer, in public, in gold letters.
On Thursday afternoon, the Michigan senator-elect posted a message to Trump on X with pictures of a gold “TRUMPCARE” health insurance card. “This is a message for @realDonaldTrump,” he wrote. “Donald, this is on the table. Guarantee healthcare for every American, from cradle to grave.”
The card in the pictures is a mock-up of the Medicare card Americans already know. It promises hospital and medical care, prescription drugs, and dental, vision and hearing coverage, starting January 1, 2027. The back of the card says patients would pay no premiums, no deductibles and no copays, and that the card would be accepted anywhere in the country with no network limits. One picture shows the card tucked into a wallet next to ordinary debit and credit cards.
By Thursday night the post had been seen more than 7 million times, with about 139,000 likes and 14,000 reposts.
The post was the latest round of a pitch El-Sayed has been making all week. On CNN’s “The Source” on Tuesday, host Kaitlan Collins asked him about his Medicare for All plan and his offer to rename it. El-Sayed turned to the camera. “Donald, if you’re watching, we can put your name on it,” he said. “I know you like to put your name on stuff. You can finally meet the unmet promise in America to guarantee everybody health care. So it’s on the table if you want to do it.”
Collins asked whether he was joking. “No, I’m absolutely serious,” he said. “I don’t care what it’s called. I want people to have health care in this country.” If a bill guaranteed everyone coverage from cradle to grave with no copay, premium or deductible, he added, “if he wants to call it Trumpcare-for-All, like, I’m game.”
On Thursday he laid out the strategy behind the offer in an interview with NPR’s Leila Fadel. His first steps, he said, would be to stop the Medicaid cuts from taking hold and bring back the Affordable Care Act subsidies, then move toward Medicare for All. If Congress passed such a bill, he said, he would welcome a fight over the veto pen. “And then I dare Donald Trump to veto. I dare him,” he said. “Because if you want to make the argument that Democrats want to deliver for you, do that. Make him veto it.”
El-Sayed, a doctor and epidemiologist who rebuilt health departments in Detroit and Wayne County, won his Senate race last week and will be the first Muslim to serve in the Senate when the new Congress is sworn in on January 3. Medicare for All was a centerpiece of his campaign.
In the same NPR interview, he also said Senate Democrats need new leadership, and agreed when host Leila Fadel put it to him that Chuck Schumer, who backed his campaign, is a leader of the past rather than the future. “If all we do is kind of go back to what we’ve been doing in a moment where we’ve been given a mandate, I worry that we may not earn our mandate,” he said.
Trump had not publicly responded to the TrumpCare offer by Thursday night.
