Rep. Raul Labrador Wins Battle to Tell the Biggest Lie About Republican Health Care Bill

It was both outrageous and sadly amusing to watch Republican lawmakers attempt to justify on Friday their appalling health care bill to both the media and their own constituents.

The runner-up for which Republican can tell the biggest whopper about a bill that would strip millions of people of health care coverage and would drive premiums sky-high for people with a long list of preexisting conditions was Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn.

In an interview with CNN on Friday, Blackburn used nearly every word in the English language except those that would answer the question about whether premiums would rise for people with preexisting conditions.

She was asked—and dodged—the question nearly a dozen times:

But the undisputed champion of the day was Idaho Republican lawmaker Raul Labrador, who told a town hall Friday morning that “nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.”

Labrador was responding to a distraught constituent who pointed out that, “You are mandating people on Medicaid [to] accept dying.”

“No one wants anyone to die,” Labrador awkwardly begins, folding his hands together as if pleading and praying for his next line to somehow slip by unnoticed. “That lie is so indefensible. Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.”

It didn’t go unnoticed:

Last month, Labrador also said that he does not believe health care is a right, the Idaho Statesman reported. The newspaper also pointed to its coverage of Jenny Steinke, a 36-year-old woman from Idaho Falls, who died during an asthma attack because she couldn’t afford health care insurance.