Poor people don’t want health care ‘just like Jesus said’: GOP Rep justifies killing Medicaid

Rep. Roger Marshall (R-KS) thinks that there is a segment of the population that doesn't want health care and he doesn't want to have to pay for them.

According to an interview with STAT News, the Kansas doctor explained that the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare helps the poor but most of those people just don't want healthcare.

“Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us,’” he explained. “There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.”

When pressed to clarify he simply "shrugged" and explained that the "Medicaid population" is on a "free credit card, as a group" and that those people don't take care of themselves so they'll end up costing taxpayers more money.

“So there’s a group of people that even with unlimited access to health care are only going to use the emergency room when their arm is chopped off or when their pneumonia is so bad they get brought [into] the ER,” he said.

For this reason, no one in poverty deserves health care.

As ThinkProgress pointed out, studies show that when people have access to health care they use it and the result is a healthier person.

“Two years after Medicaid coverage was expanded under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in their states, low-income adults in Kentucky and Arkansas received more primary and preventive care, made fewer emergency departments visits, and reported higher quality care and improved health compared with low-income adults in Texas, which did not expand Medicaid," the study summary outlines.

Marshall is basing his information on his experience working as a doctor and organizing a Kansas hospital. Kansas didn't start working on their Medicaid expansion proposals until last year. , so the legislature pitched another bill in Jan. 2017. As a Kansas doctor and member of Congress' Doctor Caucus, he's never worked under the Medicaid expansion.