title:  Republican Rep Sickeningly Justifies Obamacare Repeal: Poor People Don’t Want Healthcare
text: Republicans just keep digging their political graves deeper.The Affordable Care Act currently provides health insurance to 30 million Americans. The plans are broader than ever before and people can t be discriminated against just because they have a pre-existing condition.People who didn t have affordable access to medical care now have it.But Republicans have been trying to take it away from them for years and are still trying to do so even though Americans across the country have made it clear that they support the landmark healthcare law.The latest Republican to desperately try to justify repealing the Affordable Care Act is Kansas Rep. Roger Marshall, who claims the free market provides better and more affordable healthcare while also claiming that poor people don t want healthcare. Just like Jesus said,  The poor will always be with us,  Marshall told STAT News.  There is a group of people that just don t want health care and aren t going to take care of themselves. But Marshall, like most Republicans, is lying.As it turns out, people who gained health insurance through Medicaid expansion are, in fact, using preventive care services to take care of themselves.So saying that poor people don t want healthcare is absolutely ridiculous.But Marshall continued to insist that poor people don t want to take care of themselves. Just, like, homeless people.   I think just morally, spiritually, socially, [some people] just don t want health care. The Medicaid population, which is [on] a free credit card, as a group, do probably the least preventive medicine and taking care of themselves and eating healthy and exercising. And I m not judging, I m just saying socially that s where they are. 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. Again, Medicaid recipients are using preventive services such as mammograms and cholesterol checks by an increase of 60 percent and 20 percent.In addition, Marshall envisions a healthcare system that only the wealthy can afford. In doing so, he based his vision on the hospital he ran before taking office. Our vision was that we would look more like a hotel with customer service that delivered five-star health care,  he said.  So our cafeteria looks more like a coffee shop than it does a sterile hospital dining room. We have bright windows everywhere, and outside of every window there s a garden. Thinking that healing is more than just a knife and a needle. The price of a stay at a five-star hotel can range well into the hundreds upwards to thousands of dollars per night, hardly something a low-income American can afford.While Marshall argues that free market healthcare is more affordable, the facts paint a far different picture.For example, a British couple were on vacation in New York when the woman unexpectedly went into labor 11 weeks early. She gave birth at a private hospital and was slapped with a $200,000 medical bill.The same thing happened to a Canadian woman who was vacationing in Hawaii, only she got slapped with a $1 million medical bill.These are the astronomical prices that Republicans like Marshall think Americans should have to pay. Such prices are financially crippling to low-income Americans, and medical bankruptcy is one of the major reasons why the Affordable Care Act was passed in the first place.Because while Marshall claims that government healthcare is more expensive, had the two women above given birth in their home countries, their care would have been free because Canada and England both have national healthcare services paid for through taxes. Even a private hospital a England would have only cost the British couple $15,000, far lower than the $200,000 bill issued by the kind of  five-star  American hospital Marshall thinks should be the future of healthcare.In short, Republicans don t think poor people should get access to affordable healthcare. They think healthcare is for rich people. That s morally repugnant and is exactly why Republicans should be ousted from office en masse in 2018. This country needs a healthcare system that works for everyone. Republicans are content with just letting people die.Featured image via Flickr