--- title: Roger Marshall: Rep. Says Poor 'Just Don’t Want Health Care' description: He spent three decades as a doctor before coming to Congress canonical: https://time.com/4697680/republican-roger-marshall-poor-people-health-care/ author: Abigail Abrams article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-03-09T23:58:03.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-07T07:20:02.874Z article:section: Politics og:title: GOP Congressman Says the Poor 'Just Don’t Want Health Care' og:description: Roger Marshall spent three decades as a doctor before coming to Congress og:url: https://time.com/4697680/republican-roger-marshall-poor-people-health-care/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78fd958b50758dee/6988bddd8e060100ed469828/representative-roger-marshall-poor-health-care-congress.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4788 og:image:height: 2693 og:image:alt: Freshman Members og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: GOP Congressman Says the Poor 'Just Don’t Want Health Care' twitter:description: Roger Marshall spent three decades as a doctor before coming to Congress twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78fd958b50758dee/6988bddd8e060100ed469828/representative-roger-marshall-poor-health-care-congress.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # GOP Congressman Says the Poor 'Just Don’t Want Health Care' > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=63e59861-0dc1-4a5b-91bb-f7e39f078aa6&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Paul Ryan Is Defending the Republican Health Care Plan Amid Pitched Opposition [Watch (HLS stream): Paul Ryan Is Defending the Republican Health Care Plan Amid Pitched Opposition](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/qau2pGm8.m3u8) (0:57)  _Published 2017-03-09. Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday defended the House Republican health care plan as the only alternative to the Obama-era law, even as opposition grew from conservatives and medical professionals._ by [Abigail Abrams](https://time.com/author/abigail-abrams/) ## Abigail Abrams Mar 9, 2017 11:58 PM UTC by [Abigail Abrams](https://time.com/author/abigail-abrams/) ## Abigail Abrams Mar 9, 2017 11:58 PM UTC A first-term congressman who previously worked as a doctor is [facing criticism](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/03/09/the-poor-just-dont-want-health-care-republican-congressman-faces-backlash-over-comments/?tid=sm%5Ffb&utm%5Fterm=.6b3925f23e74) after saying poor people “just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.” Rep. Roger Marshall, a Republican from Kansas, has quickly become part of a group of doctors taking a lead on replacing the Affordable Care Act. The House Republicans released their [health care plan](http://time.com/4692936/obamacare-affordable-care-act-replacement-congress/?iid=sr-link3) on Monday to intense criticism from both liberals and conservatives, with some estimates predicting as many as one in six people could [lose health insurance](http://time.com/money/4695863/gop-healthcare-plan-whos-not-covered/?xid=homepage) under the GOP plan. So when Marshall made his comments to [STAT](https://www.statnews.com/2017/03/03/roger-marshall-kansas-obamacare/), a health care-focused website, many saw them as insensitive and out of touch. The remarks came in an interview last week when Marshall was talking about Medicaid, which [expanded](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-obamacare-factbox-idUSKBN16E2EC) to more than 30 states under Obamacare, including Republican states. The Congressman told the publication he does not believe Medicaid has helped people. “Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us,’” Marshall said in the interview. “There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.” He added that “morally, spiritually, socially,” poor people and homeless people “just don’t want health care.” Medicaid advocates struck back. “These are people who are out there, working hard, paying their bills, and to have their elected member of Congress pointing their finger at them I’m sure is disappointing,” David Jordan, executive director of the Alliance for a Healthy Kansas, [told the Kansas City _Star_](http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article137189318.html). In defending himself, Marshall said he was trying to explain that creating a national health care policy focused on “one segment of the population” does not work because of various peoples’ needs, according to the [Washington _Post_](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/03/09/the-poor-just-dont-want-health-care-republican-congressman-faces-backlash-over-comments/?tid=sm%5Ffb&utm%5Fterm=.6b3925f23e74)_._ “When I said, ‘the poor will always be with us,’ it was actually in the context of supporting the obligation we have to always take care of people, but we cannot completely craft a larger, affordable health-care policy around a comparatively small segment of the population who will get care no matter what,” Marshall said in a statement. ## Transcript Take a look at this chart. The red slice here are what I would call people with preexisting conditions, people who have real healthcare problems. The blue is the rest of the people in the individual market. That's the market where people don't get health insurance at their jobs, where they buy it themselves. The whole idea of Obamacare is the people in the blue side pay for the people in the red side. The people who are healthy pay for the people who are sick. It's not working and that's why it's in a death spiral. Here's how we propose to tackle this problem. We want to have a system where we encourage states, with federal funding, to set up risk pools and reinsurance mechanisms. Here's our solution. Let's make sure we just cover the people who have preexisting conditions. Make sure that reinsurance or risk pools kick in for those four people in that small business that get cancer, subsidize that coverage. And what you do by doing that is you dramatically lower and stabilize the price of insurance for everybody else. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4697680/republican-roger-marshall-poor-people-health-care/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4697680/republican-roger-marshall-poor-people-health-care/"},"headline":"GOP Congressman Says the Poor 'Just Don’t Want Health Care'","datePublished":"2017-03-09T23:58:03.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-07T07:20:02.874Z","description":"Roger Marshall spent three decades as a doctor before coming to Congress","url":"https://time.com/4697680/republican-roger-marshall-poor-people-health-care/","keywords":["Health Care","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78fd958b50758dee/6988bddd8e060100ed469828/representative-roger-marshall-poor-health-care-congress.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Abigail Abrams","jobTitle":"","url":"https://time.com/author/abigail-abrams/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78fd958b50758dee/6988bddd8e060100ed469828/representative-roger-marshall-poor-health-care-congress.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Freshman Members","caption":"Freshman Members","creditText":"Tom Williams—CQ-Roll Call, Inc./Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/health-care/","name":"Health Care"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4697680/republican-roger-marshall-poor-people-health-care/","name":"GOP Congressman Says the Poor 'Just Don’t Want Health Care'"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Paul Ryan Is Defending the Republican Health Care Plan Amid Pitched Opposition","description":"Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday defended the House Republican health care plan as the only alternative to the Obama-era law, even as opposition grew from conservatives and medical professionals.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/qau2pGm8/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2017-03-09T20:02:17.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/qau2pGm8.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4697680/republican-roger-marshall-poor-people-health-care/","duration":"PT57S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4697680/republican-roger-marshall-poor-people-health-care/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```