Michael Bloomberg opened the Democratic presidential debate attacking Bernie Sanders's "Medicare for all" plan.

"I don't think there's any chance of the senator beating Donald Trump," Bloomberg said in the Las Vegas debate Wednesday night. "You don't start out by saying, 'I've got 160 million people. I'm going to take away the insurance plan that they love.'"

Sanders's plan would ban private insurance in favor of enrolling everyone in the United States in a government plan.

The ninth Democratic debate is the first in which Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, has participated. Sanders called into question Bloomberg's policies that he said marginalized minority groups during his time in office, including stop and frisk, doubting that he could garner the kind of support needed to gain the voter turnout necessary to beat President Trump.