John Oliver Shows How Out Of Touch Trumpcare Is

As John Oliver made perfectly clear in Sunday's main segment, Trumpcare may not work out so well for most Americans — especially between the 6 and 15 million who could lose coverage. That's on top of the others who will see big increases in insurance prices given that the tax credits will be smaller than current subsidies. Plus there's the changes to Medicaid. In other words, it's no good for poor Americans, or old ones. But one congressman thinks he has an easy solution for everyone. So Oliver ripped apart Jason Chaffetz's iPhone comment, obviously.

The solution in Chaffetz's mind came as a comment came during an interview on CNN's New Day about the Republican's Obamacare alternative, officially called the American Health Care Act. He thinks that even poor Americans can buy health insurance if they would just reprioritize their spending. "You know what, Americans have choices, and they've got to make a choice," Chaffetz said. "And so maybe, instead of getting that new iPhone that they just love and want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest in their own healthcare."

John Oliver is just not having that. At all:

That is complete bullshit. And it's frankly a little hard to take a lecture on making good choices from a man who presumably entered the barbershop and said, "Give me the wet poodle pubes." Make it look like this photo I took. The truth is if insurance cost as much as an iPhone, we wouldn't even be having this debate. People are going to be hurt by this bill. And those hit the hardest, who stand to lose $5,000 or more under the new plan, are ironically a group that voted for Trump by a huge margin, which is honestly pretty frustrating.

Oliver didn't end his criticism there, though. He went on to explain what it seems like is happening with this group of people. "It's like if the people of Pompeii voted for the volcano," Oliver explains. "Oh, I know you get to define your own self-interest, but I wish you hadn't voted for that volcano."

That's a good joke, but it's also pretty much the truth of the matter. Many poor Americans voted for Donald Trump, and their premiums could go way up — or they could lose their insurance all together. That brings Oliver to his next question. "If this bill is bad for older Americans, poor Americans, and many Trump supporters, and all these groups oppose it, who exactly is it for?" Oliver asks.

That's the answer that moves Chaffetz and other Republicans to back the bill, Oliver argues. The wealthy will get a huge tax break. It's literally a tax cut of $600 billion, with the upper 0.1 percent taking home about $200,000 more per year.

Maybe they should use that money to buy every American an iPhone. And how about some Airpods while they're at it?