Senator and OB-GYN Roger Marshall Had 81 of His Own Patients Arrested Over Medical Bills

Eighty one people in Kansas have been arrested over unpaid medical bills, at the request of the OB-GYN who treated them. His name is Roger Marshall. He is a United States senator, and Kansas can vote him out in eight weeks.His campaign calls him Doc Marshall and advertises his deep appreciation and passion for the sanctity of life. The New York Times went through Kansas court records. He and his practice sued more than seven hundred patients, garnished paychecks, froze bank accounts, and charged eighteen percent annual interest on bills as small as one hundred and one dollars.Meischa Zimmerman owed three thousand five hundred and ninety six dollars for an emergency C-section. At eighteen percent interest it passed seven thousand before deputies came for her. She asked them quietly if they could not put the cuffs on in front of her two year old. That is the daughter the C-section delivered.Joe Vasquez and his wife were arrested on Easter weekend in 2007 while their grandkids got ready for an egg hunt. Four thousand five hundred and sixty one dollars for her emergency hysterectomy. Two days in jail. He was on disability. She worked at a plant. Marshall’s lawyers are the ones who went to the court and asked for that warrant.In 2004 he sued a woman for twelve hundred dollars. She wrote to the court asking not to be held liable for care, her words, “for me and my twins (who I lost).” They held her liable anyway. She buried two babies and then she paid for them. My dude, you run on the sanctity of life.Look at what every one of these bills is for. A C-section. A hysterectomy. Twins that died. Nobody elects any of that. Forty six percent of Kansas women live in a county with no OB-GYN and nowhere to give birth, and Marshall’s hospital in Great Bend is the regional delivery room for a chunk of that map, in a county poorer than the national average. Closing that gap is the job he ran for. Instead he found the people the gap produced and sued them.He kept collecting until 2021, five years after he went to Congress. In 2017 he helped lead the push to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The oath is do no harm. His version was find the harm, bill for it, then add eighteen percent.His opponent, a pastor named Adam Hamilton, put it this way. “In Washington, Roger Marshall votes to strip healthcare and raise costs. In Kansas, he sued more than 700 patients who couldn’t afford the bill.”Marshall’s spokeswoman’s answer to all of it: “Judges issue warrants, not doctors.” Right. And the gun did the shooting.A hundred million Americans are carrying medical debt right now. You are unconscious or you are terrified, somebody hands you a bill weeks later, and in forty four states that bill can end with you in a cell. Marshall did not build that. He just ran it harder than almost anyone. Kansas deserves better. So does the rest of the country.Sources:https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/08/us/politics/roger-marshall-obgyn-doctor-debts.htmlhttps://www.kumc.edu/school-of-nursing/about/ku-nursing-magazine/winter-2025/the-decline-of-rural-maternal-services.htmlhttps://www.aclu.org/report/pound-flesh-criminalization-private-debt Get full access to The Rogue Voice aka Linsay Rousseau at linsayrousseau.substack.com/subscribe