It's rare that we can conclusively answer the age-old question of dishonest politicians—evil, or just stupid?—but in this case it's fairly clear that Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador is lying on purpose and sincerely does not care if his constituents know it.
“You are mandating people on Medicaid accept dying,” a constituent told Labrador at a town hall meeting at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho, Friday morning. “You are making a mandate that will kill people.”
“No one wants anybody to die. That line is so indefensible,” Labrador responded.
“Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care,” he continued, drawing loud jeers from the audience.
Not only is this untrue, this is so transparently untrue that you would have to be in a Guyana cult leader's camp for the last decade to even give him the benefit of contemplating it for a half-moment. Americans attempting to struggle along despite not having access to health care is a staple of the news cycle. Americans showing up in emergency rooms suffering from acute dangers that would have never happened in the first place, had they been given access to preventative care beforehand.
Not only do Americans die from a lack of access to health care, they do so regularly, and by the tens of thousands. Rep. Raul Labrador's insistence otherwise is not just a lie, it's a thumbing of his nose at everyone in the room. There's no way Labrador believed what he said to be true.