PAC wants voters to choose Dr. Tina Shah to pull the plug on Medicare

Let’s get one thing straight right off the top: the American Medical Association’s political arm, AMPAC, is spending your money like a riverboat gambler with a stolen wallet.

And tonight, that money is flowing straight into the Democratic primary campaign of Dr. Tina Shah.

That’s the same organization, friends and neighbors, that fought the very creation of Medicare back in the 1960s like a dog with a bone, squawking about “socialized medicine” and hiring Ronald Reagan to make a record album full of doom.

They lost that fight, thank goodness, but they never changed their stripes. Now they’re back, working the same side of the street to make sure Medicare for All never sees the light of day.

And who is their new favorite horse in this race? Dr. Tina Shah, a Democrat running in the 7th District, who suddenly finds herself awash in that sweet, defensive AMPAC cash. She’s up against Brian Varela, a progressive Democrat who actually supports Medicare for All and carries the endorsement of Bernie Sanders’ Our Revolution.

That’s the difference, plain as a busted fence: one candidate wants to finish the job Lyndon Johnson started, and the other is getting patted on the back by the same crowd that once called the original Medicare a communist plot.

AMA PAC, which hasn’t previously invested in a New Jersey race, reported a $150,000 media buy backing Shah, an ICU doctor. The ad closely mirrors Shah’s campaign messaging, featuring a narrator who says: “In a hospital, every second matters – Dr. Tina Shah learned that in the ICU.”

The American Medical Association (AMA) officially opposes “Medicare for All” and maintains that single-payer systems are the wrong approach compared to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which provides insurance company subsidies.

“The American Medical Association firmly believes that the best pathway to expand affordable, high-quality health insurance coverage to all Americans is through a mix of private and public health insurance options,” said Dr. James Madara, the doctors’ group’s CEO. “We remain opposed to Medicare for All…”

Now, let’s be honest about the lay of the land.

The Republican in this Democratic primary race, longtime Texas operative Rebecca Bennett, is leading the pack in cold, hard cash. She’s the favorite of the fat-cat set. And there’s also a business advisor named Michael Roth floating around, because there’s always a fellow in a clean suit who thinks he can fix the world with a PowerPoint.

But the real prize is beating the incumbent, Tom Kean Jr., a man who just last year voted to slash a trillion dollars from healthcare. A trillion. With a T. That’s not a cut, that’s an amputation.

The smart money, the actual political sense on the ground, says Brian Varela is the Democrat who can actually send Kean packing. He’s got the fire, he’s got the people, and he’s got the one issue that moves the needle: the simple, un-American notion that a family shouldn’t go broke because somebody got sick.

And for that, the AMA’s PAC is spending heavily to stop him. They are pouring cash into Dr. Shah’s campaign not because she’s a bad person, but because she’s a speed bump.

She’s the nice doctor who will talk about “strengthening the system” and “protecting choice” while the insurance companies keep picking your pocket.

Shah, a triple board-certified physician, shared rhetoric suggesting her frontline medical expertise will allow her to fix a “broken” political system, but her platform is riddled with platitudes and light on specifics.

Bennett is equally opaque, informing readers that she “worked to increase access and improve patient outcomes in women’s health, oncology, obesity, and gastrointestinal care,” as a pharmaceutical company executive, without any clarity about how that is “making it work for all of us.”

By contrast, Varela pulls no punches.

“Enact Medicare for All so all Americans can finally have quality, affordable healthcare,” said Varela’s website, which also pledges the candidate to: “Fight to codify Roe vs. Wade into law and protect women’s reproductive freedoms.”

“Medicare for All is not radical,” said Varela. “It is common sense, and it is the only path to a healthcare system that finally works for everyone.”

Make no mistake. When an organization that spent the 1960s calling Medicare the end of freedom starts writing big checks in a Democratic primary in 2026, they haven’t changed their mind. They just changed their candidate.

If you vote for the AMPAC-approved Democrat, you’re not voting for reform. And if you vote for the longtime Republican who made big money in the healthcare industry, you’re not voting for reform. Backing Shah or Bennett means voting for the same old horse, painted in a different color, standing in the same stall, blocking the door.

The fact is that only one serious contender, Varela, is willing to pursue the solution preferred by more than 80 percent of Americans, and the big PACs representing concentrated money want you to vote for someone else.