John Oliver yesterday tackled the subject of Obamacare on Last Week Tonight — saying the GOP’s solutions put forward to replace it were flawed.
Opening the segment, he joked that The Affordable Care Act was “also known as Obamacare, or in emails from your uncle as ‘FWD: FWD: FWD: The Communist takeover of American values!!!’.”
He told how the Act had been “the bane of Republicans’ existence”, with footage shown of GOP Rep. Steve King saying that if Obamacare was ever implemented and enforced “we will never recover from it”.
But Oliver then laid out how grim the health insurance system was before the admittedly imperfect Obamacare took hold. And he concluded that the current healthcare system is far superior to what existed before.
He said: “The point here is Obamacare was an attempt to solve those problems. It made it illegal to deny people coverage because of pre-existing conditions. It let people stay on their parents’ plans until age 26. It made preventive screenings free for everyone, and created marketplaces where people could shop for insurance with potential subsidies.
“And between all that and Medicaid expansion, more than 20 million people gained coverage…putting our uninsured rate at a historic low.”
Interspersed with B-Roll from various Town Hall meetings where people are angrily confronting their GOP lawmakers, Oliver furthered his argument by talking about the GOP’s love affair of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), which he said they were great tax-free savings’ havens for rich people and useless for the average Americans, and the “continuous coverage incentive” which penalizes anyone whose insurance drops for any reason.
Last Week Tonight airs Sundays at 11pm ET/PT on HBO.