Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, would be high on the list for any number of booby prizes after comments he made Friday sizzled through several major news outlets and social media platforms.
At a town hall meeting in Coeur d’Alene, Labrador responded to a woman’s comment that he’s “mandating people on Medicaid accept dying,” with: “That line is so indefensible. Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.”
He later tried to explain away what he said, but it already had spread like wildfire across Facebook, Twitter and other cyber commentaries.
Labrador, by the way, is a member of the ultra-right Freedom Caucus, which gives some weight to his vote to help pass the American Health Care Act in the House. We have not studied the AHCA enough to make a judgment about whether it will be a step up from the Affordable Care Act, but we are willing to bet our bottom dollar coverage for pre-existing conditions and broader coverage for America’s poor aren’t hallmarks of the GOP plan.
As an attorney and a U.S. House member since the 2010 election, Labrador should have known better than to make a statement that’s so easily turned against him.
Let’s look at a few facts.
Study after study has found people who don’t have health insurance don’t fare as well as the average Joe and Jill.
A primary reason is that insurance nearly always means a better outpatient history because those who have it take better care of themselves with routine visits to physicians, whereas those without insurance can’t afford such things and deem food on the table as more important.
One of Labrador’s critics at the town hall meeting, later identified as an emergency room nurse, was reported in the Idaho Statesman as giving the following scenario for a non-insured person living hand-to-mouth:
“… when they get sick, they’re going to get sicker, because they won’t have primary care, they won’t have preventive care, and they’re going to lose their jobs, they’re going to lose their homes. And they’re going to have a $10,000 ICU stay for what could have been a $35 primary care visit, $5 worth of penicillin for their antibiotics.” And, it will become a debt the attending hospital will have to absorb.
Labrador responded with another caustic comment, saying Oregon was an example of a state that had increased Medicaid spending on indigent care to find that “most of the poor people ended up going to the ERs anyway.”
USING SUCH generalities to dismiss people, regardless of their financial or social standing, is disgusting coming from one of 435 representatives in the U.S. House. Let us hope the Senate is better equipped to derail what from many early appearances is a lousy substitute for the Affordable Care Act.
— Bob Johnson
