John Oliver’s HBO late night show has again bought ad time on Fox & Friends in the Washington D.C. area which will target an audience of exactly one person. On Wednesday’s F&F, Last Week Tonight character Catheter Cowboy will explain to President Donald Trump how devastating the GOP’s American Health Care Act will be for millions of Americans. In particular it will hit older people in rural areas, who voted for him, and who have with medical conditions that require ongoing treatment.
Tackling the GOP push to repeal and replace Obamacare for the second time in three weeks, Oliver noted Trump has been largely absent on the subject.
Oliver was dubious Trump knows what’s in the plan, given that he recently said, on camera, “We have come up with a solution that’s really, really, I think, very good. Now I have to tell you it’s an unbelievably complex subject, nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.”
“Everybody knew!” Oliver corrected.
Trump is so noticeably absent from the whole process, his surrogate Kellyanne Conway told NBC News’s Chuck Todd she would call it Trumpcare if he wanted, but insisted she has not heard Trump saying to anyone on his team, ‘Hey, I want my name on that’.”
“Holy Shit! Trump is not clamoring to put his name on this bill!” Oliver ranted, noting Trum puts his name on practically everything.
AHCA as something that you may not want, looks awful but is here anyway, Oliver said – “the legislative equivalent of Pirates of the Caribbean 5: The Curse Of Johnny Depp Getting Divorced And Needing the Money.”
Early reviews of the new health care plan have been rough. “Much like the life behind Melania Trump’s eyes, the AHCA the looks dead by time it was introduced in Washington,” he added.
But, Oliver cautioned, the bill is not DOA and needs to be looked at thoroughly. It gets rid of Obamacare’s tax credit and replaces it with a flat tax credit based on age “so, the older you get, the more money you get. Think of it as the exact opposite of being a woman in Hollywood.”
But the dollar amount works out to far less money, Oliver said. Experts say those who are lower income will be particularly hurt, and that’s before even get into changes Medicaid, which is “where this bill gets really vicious.”
The country’s top 1%-ers will get a tax break of about $33K under the GOP health-care plan, and those in the top 0.1% will see an average tax cut of about $197K.
Meanwhile, an estimated 6-15M people are projected to lose insurance, and those hit the hardest, who stand to lose $5K or more under the new plan, are less affluent, older, more rural Americans who voted for Trump by a huge margin, Oliver noted.
“It’s like if the people of Pompei voted for the volcano.”
