Dr Tina Shah is polling to diagnose her messaging... But her campaign is DOA!

Dr. Tina Shah hired a polling company to measure the opinions of voters in the 7th Congressional District, where progressive New Jersey Democrat Brian Varela is locked in a tight race, trailing longtime Texas Republican Rebecca Bennett, the former Navy helicopter pilot whose husband spent time working in former Governor Phil Murphy’s office and later landed a job at the New Jersey Economic Development Agency.

Shah launched her campaign after serving under three White House administrations and earning encomia from the American Medical Association.

As Senior Advisor to the U.S. Surgeon General, she spearheaded the nation’s first federal strategy to address clinician burnout, ensuring we have enough nurses and doctors to care for us when we need them most.

Shah spent two years at Abridge, a company using artificial intelligence to change the way healthcare works for providers, patients, and payers. This year, Abridge is projected to support more than 80 million patient-clinician conversations across 250 of the largest and most complex health systems in the U.S.

Even if nobody knows what that means, it sure sounds impressive, and Shah worked there while also holding down a job as a pulmonary and critical care physician at RWJBarnabas Health.

At the Department of Veterans Affairs, she became the agency’s first National Director of Clinician Wellbeing, but her tenure coincided with a difficult time for the VA, which was perhaps the only serious Obama administration scandal.

From 2016 to 2017, while Shah was a White House Fellow assigned to the VA, problems dragged on, leaving thousands of veterans stuck with long waits or denied care, which fueled more calls for accountability and leadership changes.

Reports from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) exposed widespread mismanagement, falsified wait times, and subpar care. Investigations revealed that staff in several states used “ghost panels” of doctors who no longer worked there and erased scheduling data to cover up problems.

A 2016 GAO report found a “piecemeal approach” to addressing corruption, while investigations found VA staff in 19 states “zeroed out” wait times, and Houston-area facilities had over 200 instances of manipulated records.

VA executives continued to receive bonuses despite the ongoing systemic corruption and failures in providing timely care.

Nobody expects to find a lot of New Jersey voters who plan to cast a ballot in the Democratic primary election who are cheering on Donald Trump’s absurd, illegal, and unprovoked military misadventure in the Middle East.

The same is true about the brutal deportation tactics employed by the Gestapo-like federal agents handling immigration enforcement, like those who murdered such US citizens as Alex Pretti and Renee Good, among others.

Nothing the Republicans do will be popular among this audience, but Shah is really missing the point because she is not running against Trump or Tom Kean Jr., the GOP incumbent who has been missing in action for weeks.

Shah is vying with Michael Roth for third place in the 7th Congressional District, a tight race where Varela, a first-generation American whose parents are Colombian immigrants who settled in New Jersey, is trailing Bennett by a number within the margin of error in most polls.

In addition to being a longtime Republican who views the late GOP Senator John McCain as a role model, Bennett has invested in some of America’s biggest polluters—including fossil fuel giants ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Phillips 66.

Bennett is also cashing in on the AI invasion of America’s overpriced and underperforming health care industry, which is learning to make money with

“I am one of those doctors who burned out and almost left the profession,” said Dr. Shah, who said she joined Abridge to help doctors eliminate time spent documenting notes concerning their patients, a time consuming task that is necessary to ensure proper care in a hospital setting and defend against malpractice litigation.

The U.S. is the only high-income country without universal health coverage; almost ten percent of the population is uninsured despite the success of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which provides massive government subsidies to private health insurance companies.

A taxpayer-funded system that would provide universal coverage — commonly called Medicare for All — would ensure that health care is accessible for everyone, and it would be more affordable, because it is expected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars less than Americans currently spend each year on medical treatment, prescription drugs, and hospitalization.

Shah has received awards from the American Medical Association, which has been one of the most zealous foes of Medicare for All. In fact, the AMA paid Ronald Reagan to record a message opposing the original legislation that resulted in Medicare, the government-run health insurance system that covers everyone aged 65 or older, as well as younger people who suffer from specific disabilities, End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD), or ALS.

Medicare, one of America’s most popular government services, covers over 66 million people, offering hospital insurance (Part A), medical insurance (Part B), and prescription drug coverage (Part D).

A series of questions concentrating on Shah’s qualifications suggests that her campaign is behind the poll. There is a fair likelihood that voters swamped with more mail from the candidate will see one of those specific constructs in the messaging that lands over the next four weeks.