There's just so much to unpack in Rep. Ralph Abraham's luncheon speech on March 19 in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Abraham's congressional district, the 5th, is the tenth poorest in the nation, and has benefitted hugely from the adoption of Medicaid expansion, which has provided coverage to half a million Louisianians who were previously uninsured.
But Abraham doesn't see anything good in that. In fact, he's blaming rising healthcare costs on poor people getting access. He told the lunch crowd that low-income people are "voting for a living instead of working for a living," and that it's their fault costs are going up. He also claimed that people were "were mandated to go to the [Medicaid] expansion." He apparently believes that people were forced off of their private insurance and onto Medicaid, which is just flat-out untrue, not to mention stupid.
"I'm just tired of people voting for a living instead of working for a living," Abraham said, "because if they're on that program of the government—and it could be a state or a federal program—what are they going to do? They're going to vote to keep that program going." By the way, the 5th District is more than one-third African-American, so it's not hard to imagine who Abraham thinks shouldn't be voting.
All in all, though, it might be better for the people in the 5th Congressional District to have Abraham in Congress instead of doing his previous job—he was a medical doctor, running a rural clinic in Mangham, Louisiana. It's quite possibly healthier for the population of Mangham not be getting care from this dumb asshole.