S4 E3: Obamacare, Neil Gorsuch & Immigration: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

[Music] what welcome welcome welcome to Last Week Tonight and Oliva thank you so much for joining us and un unfortunately we must begin again with President Trump two words that continue to sound unnatural together like warus porn or Tilda Swinton now on Tuesday Trump visited the Museum of African-American history and culture promising to unite a divided country and if you didn't hear about that it's probably because it happened on the very same day he did this the Trum Administration this morning laying out plans to aggressively crack down on illegal immigration potentially sparking a steep increase in deportations and stoking fears among immigrant communities okay so that's upsetting even by Donald Trump's standards because normally when he wants to terrify an immigrant he just texts Melania coming home early feeling horny now now this this new plan gives ice agents much greater latitude in who they can pursue and Deport and it includes hiring 15 ,000 new border patrol and immigration officers which might actually be difficult as they've already had so much trouble finding qualified applicants there are currently around 2,000 vacancies it seems immigration agen is the hardest job to fill right after personal assistant to mariia KY I want a limo for my dog and mirrors that make me look like it's 1997 go get me them now many people were alarmed by the new guidelines and it frankly didn't help when the president seemed to escalate the stakes out of nowhere we're getting really bad dudes out of this country and at a rate that nobody's ever seen before and they're the bad ones and it's a military operation okay okay first please stop using the phrase Bad Dudes please I understand that you're trying to wean yourself off bad ombres but it still feels like a lateral move but more importantly what was that you said about a military operation that is a casual way to mention that you've deployed the armed forces and luckily for everyone emmy-winning actress Melissa McCarthy was on hand to set the record straight with the world's least convincing explanation the president was using that as an adjective it's happening with Precision okay Mel but presidents really need to be precise with language when you're the commander-in-chief the term military operation has consequences it's not just a meaningless word you can throw around like consultant or SuperFood but please pleas please please don't think that Trump just went after immigrants this week because he targeted children too schools and students are facing uncertainty today after the Trump Administration withdrew Federal guidance on transgender bathroom use in public schools yes it seems one by one Trump is delivering on his promise to make entire subsets of the American citizenry concerned about their safety and well-being again # motat Saba but this is tus in so many ways the guidelines had already been suspended last summer and there's a Supreme Court case that may settle many of these issues on top of which all the guidelines recommended was that students be called by their preferred name and pronoun be allowed to use the restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity and regardless of gender be able to wear a tux a prom or a dress in yearbook photos which is a good rule if the government wants to address an actual problem with yearbooks maybe ban quotes by Dave Matthews oh really Dylan you've got so much to say evidence is sacking up to the contrary and look as we've discussed before on this show anti-transgender rules like bathroom bills are almost always rooted in deep sexual fearmongering the idea that they would provide cover for predators to sneak into ladyes locker rooms despite the fact there is virtually no evidence of that happening what there are reports of are of trump himself barging in on women and teenagers who competed in his pageants while they check changed something that in characteristic style he has both denied and been recorded on tape bragging about I'll go backstage before a show and everyone's getting dressed and ready and everything else and you know no men are anywhere and I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant and therefore I'm inspecting it you know they're standing there with no is everybody okay and you see these incredible looking women and so I sort of get away with things like that yeah you do seem to sort of get away with it which is exactly why if we really want to protect women from predators let's stop wasting our time with pointless vindictive bathroom laws and instead launch a military operation to ban the president himself from women's rooms Nationwide and now this and now some random thoughts from WCBS 2 meteorologist John Elliot so I'm told that if the light would hit him just right Thomas Jefferson had red hair so there's your first redheaded president hey you know what our Buddy Joe iavelli ran in the New York City marathon he didn't break any records but you know he ran he finished so way to go that is great that's Julie's husband one two three four four tattoos in the studio and there's only two people here h no no I'm kidding kid do you have a tattoo you know I'd love to do a duet with John lithco terrific singer I love iced tea in the commercial where they iced tea no it's lemonade I love clip on ties remember clip on ties when you were a kid I love that I uh posted a picture of my mom on Facebook this week 600 likes ban does anybody wear ban roll on anymore with pizza it's all a function of geometry and the thickness and then the angle and then when you fold it so yeah there's really an art to that Jerry Maguire or Weekend at Bernie's I can't decide moving on our main story tonight is the Affordable Care Act also known as Obamacare or in emails from your uncle as forward forward forward the communist takeover of American values for years now Obamacare has been the bane of Republicans existence if Obamacare is ever implemented and enforced we will never recover from it this bill is an affront on the moral morality of the provision of American healthc care ObamaCare is the worst piece of legislation ever yes the worst piece of legislation ever so good news Fugitive Slave Act you're finally off the hook but now with with Republicans controlling both the White House and Congress they've gone from talking about repealing Obamacare to potentially being able to do it already the House and Senate have passed budget resolutions to start the process and at least one member is positively giddy about it a little over six years ago I lived in a pretty decent house and one day I heard a knock on the door and before I knew it my colleagues from the other side of the aisle had let a goat loose in my house now for six years that goat has been messing in and destroying my house I want to renovate my house but before I can I have to get the goat out of the house before it does any more damage it makes no sense to start fixing up my house until we get the goat out voting for the fiscal year 17 budget resolution gets this goat out of my house that's is so specific there is just no way that goat incident didn't actually happen I bet he brings it up all the time Mr Speaker NAFTA is like when you half asleep one morning you put your arm around what you think is your wife but lo and behold it that goat again and you wonder why is it weing my wife's perfume get this goat out of my house y'all and yet all week long Republicans will be dealing with an unexpected problem constituents at Town Halls Furious that Obamacare might be taken away I could tell you three members of my family included me that would be dead dead and homeless if it was not for ACA yes apparently that annoying Obamacare goat in the house turned out to be a licensed physician who's been saving lives and a lot of people do not want her to go anywhere and yes I said her oh I'm sorry you assumed that goat doctor was a man what the is wrong with you # lady goats can be doctors # feminism and look that tone is actually a big shift because if you remember eight years ago people absolutely terrified about what Obamacare might mean this is the stepping stone for for takeover like communist like Hitler did in Germany Obama's a Marxist socialist no don't do this to us get dirty thieves you want to kill my grandparents you come through me first look relax President Obama did not want to kill that guy's grandparents and if he did he wouldn't have used health insurance he'd have just ordered a drone strike and then declared them enemy combatants that was his style so tonight let's look at Obamacare what it does what needs fixing and how Republicans plan to replace it and before we start it's worth remembering just how bad things were before it was passed nearly 49 million Americans had no coverage and if you buying for yourself insurers could deny anyone they considered too risky some denied entire professions like air traffic controllers taxi cab drivers and scuba divers and this baby was denied coverage at Just 4 months old for an unexpected pre-existing condition his parents decided to apply for individual health coverage for Alex but they were turned down not because of his age but because he was too fat am I supposed to put my child on a diet put him on a treadmill of course not he's an infant look yes I I understand that you're upset but think about it he's never going to lose the weight with that attitude but the point here is Obamacare was an attempt to solve those problems it made it illegal to deny people cover because of pre-existing conditions uh it let people stay on their parents' plans until age 26 it made preventive screenings free for everyone and creative 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 and yet and yet for many people like this woman whose treatment for breast cancer was covered under Obamacare the law was just always too closely associated with the man responsible for it I absolutely detest hearing the words Obamacare yeah detest it it just should have been given a more proper name why be named after our president okay well to be clear it did have a proper name it was the patient protection and Affordable Care Act but that does go to show you it matters what people call something would Emma Stone be as popular if her real name was blump sharts cracker no no so it's that's that's why it's good that she changed it and some of the early accusations held against Obamacare still linger just this month a republican official Bill Akin in Florida threw out this classic at a town hall here's the problems I have with the Affordable Health Care Act number one there is a provision in there that anyone over the age of 74 has to go before what is effectively a death panel yes they do yes they do it's in there folks you're [Applause] wrong okay children all right [Applause] children it is a death panel who here has read the affordable health care plan I seriously doubt that what the are you talking about the motion of death panels isn't just a lie it's politifax 2009 lie of the year which is impressive considering that in 2009 America was also repeatedly told Jason morz was the next big thing we will Li to in a big way there and look Obamacare is not perfect it had and has serious flaws the healthcare.gov website was broken on day one and the president famously made a very misleading promise if you like your doctor you will be able to keep your doctor period if you like your healthc care plan you'll be able to keep your healthcare plan period the truth is no one can promise that insurers drop policies and doctors change networks all the time that is as empty a promise as a father telling his daughter I will always keep you safe period really Dad what about bees what about angry swarms of bees be honest and say I'll try to keep you safe but these bees are not around and there have been practical problems too some plans have deductible so high they're essentially unusable and in many places premiums have increased sharply and some insurers have dropped out although that was partly thanks to Republicans gutting a program in the original bill that helped protect insurers from unexpected losses and that has been something of a pattern here Republicans have happily complained about the flaws in the law taken no responsibility for fixing them and in fact have often undermined the whole thing but that time is now over it is their turn to present a plan and the clock is ticking insurance companies are deciding right now whether to even offer Obamacare plans next year but before you panic there are ads on TV right now suggesting that Republicans have been working on something pretty special Imagine A New Path forward health insurance that provides more choices and better care at lower costs House Republicans have a plan to get there without disrupting existing coverage giving your family the health care it deserves well that sounds nice but it is a little worrying that that ad is literally encouraging you to imagine a better healthc care plan close your eyes dream of A Better Way Forward now open your eyes and tell us what you came up with cuz we've got nothing and and if you think I'm killing there that ad ends with learn more at a better Healthcare plan.com but if you go there this is the entire website a single page with just two sentences of text and the ad again and if you click on the ad it'll send you back to the website and so on and so on and so on until you don't even want healthcare because you're begging for the sweet relief of death every time you get near something resembling a republican plan it seems to just recede into the distance in January Trump said he was working on one and that it was very much formulated down to the final strokes but watch what happened when Tom Price his secretary of Health and Human Services was asked about it at his confirmation hearing president Trump said he's working with you in a replacement plan for the ACA um which is nearly finished and will be revealed after your confirmation is that true it's true that he said that yes it's funny because the president lies to us all the time with no repercussions that's that I see what the joke we're laughing at is oh dear if you need any more proof of how unprepared Republicans are right now let me show you one of the draft bills they circulated it is just seven pages long and it ends abruptly with the word placeholder and one member of Congress actually tried to spin that as a positive this placeholder provides the clearest signal yet that we're working with patients and Healthcare groups to draft language that balances important health status protections with necessary risk mitigation tools oh please if your spouse gave you a birthday card that said placeholder that would not be a signal they're working on the best language to express their feelings for you it would signal they forgot your birthday because they're Sharon from the office and deep down I think you actually know that the best sense we currently have of what Republicans want to do is from previous plans from both price and Paul Ryan and from these talking points that Ryan gave out ahead of the Congressional recess you are going to be hearing a few phrases from this a lot in the coming months so let's take a moment to understand what they actually mean and let's start with the big one on which Ryan has been talking up a great deal what we believe is the right way to go which is what our plan is are refundable tax credits for people to go be able to buy affordable coverage yes refundable tax credits basically free money to help pay your premiums which is a little surprising coming from Paul Ryan a man who probably tips waiters by writing on the check find a job the market has deemed has more value but but you should know this document suggests tax credits would be based on age not income mean meaning theoretically 61-year-old billionaire Bill Gates would get a bigger subsidy than a 27-year-old making minimum wage and Gates clearly does not need that money he'll just blow it on more $10 haircuts and Orthopedic sweaters but the real risk here is subsidies ending up too small for those who need them the most Tom Price once proposed a credit of $1,200 to people aged uh 18 to 35 and $3,000 to people 50 and up which is roughly a third to the cost of the most Bare Bones plans on the market today a tax credit that small helps cover your health insurance the way a thong covers your dad's ass it doesn't and there's something that is fundamentally wrong about that now now the next big term in here is health savings accounts or hsas tax-free accounts where you can save money to pay for health care costs Republicans love these things in your experience why do these savings account why why are you pushing so hard for them why do you think they're effective because you're spending your own money as opposed to someone else's it's like when my daughter goes to the mall with my credit card or when I go to the mall with my credit card our purchases come back quite different okay setting aside that Healthcare is nothing like shopping at the mall shouldn't you come back with different purchases than your daughter regardless of whose credit card you have if you came back from the mall with a tongue ring a bottle of manic IC hair dye and a Yas Queen crop top it would raise a lot of questions having nothing to do with Healthcare now the key problem with hsas should be obvious here they're great for rich people they're basically a tax shelter but if you're too poor to save or you get sick enough to blow through what you've saved you're not going to be covered and you have that thong problem again and people seem to understand that just listen to the reaction when Joanie erns tried bringing them up at a town hall that health savings accounts it is a it is an IDE that is an appropriate reaction when your problem is I don't have enough money and the proposed solution is well if you ever do he's a very fancy piggy bank so so let's move on to another key idea block grants a phrase perfectly designed to bore you cuz it combines block the most nothing shape with Grant your co-worker nothing boyfriend I don't believe we've met yes we have six times I'm Grant Paul Ryan wants to use block grants to fund Medicaid which largely provides healthc care to the poorest Americans basically he wants to stop guaranteeing to pay each state a percentage of their Medicaid costs and instead just send them a fixed block of money but if costs start to rise and the block grant doesn't keep Pace guess what it's that thong thong th thong thong thong and and you should know a few years ago Ryan proposed a block grant program that a study estimated could kick as many as 20 and a half million people off Medicaid over a decade that's a kind of evil so chillingly Bol you just don't see it coming it's like if you found out that Grant was a serial killer I kill in plain sight for none can remember my face I am Grant we've now met seven times but now let's move on to the final big talking point here and I'll let Paul Ryan explain we believe that state high-risk pools are a smarter way of guaranteeing coverage for people with pre-existing conditions yes highrisk pools now they may sound like something you find at Jeremy piven's house but what they actually do is isolate the sickest people in their own insurance group now in theory this brings everyone else's insurance rates down but there is an obvious problem here again those pools are going to be incredibly expensive which is fine if the government subsidizes them properly but if it doesn't that's right it's thong a clock everybody because 3 years ago a study estimated that adequately funding high-risk pools just to maintain Obamacare levels of coverage would cost around $178 billion a year guess how much Tom Price set aside 3 billion over3 years that is 1 178 of what is needed imagine imagine you asked for £178 of grade a premium hunk but instead of Chris Evans someone brought you six of his severed toes well Tom Price's plan is six severed hunk toes so so those are the four big bullet points but perhaps the most revealing thing about this document is not what's inside it but what is not in there because there is no replacement for the individual mandate obamacare's requirement that you have insurance or pay a penalty and it is the thing that people hate the most the individual mandate is unconstitutional we got to get rid of the individual mandate I believe that is a freedom killing part of the Affordable Care Act out the gate that should be repealed get rid of the individual mandate who's got two thumbs and hates the individual mandate this guy but but the Mandate keeps younger healthier people in the system which is crucial to lower the cost for everyone else and to keep in popular Provisions like among other things not punishing fat babies the the Republican solution is to make it really painful for you to get insurance again if you drop it at any point for any reason they use the positive sounding term continuous coverage incentive but it has to involve some kind of penalty maybe a higher premium or even denial of coverage and they are not keen to talk about details there remember the placeholder from earlier that was in place of an explanation of the continuous coverage in incentive basically this is a subject so toxic they'd rather just go abruptly silent much like when you're a white person singing karaoke and you realize uhoh we have an nword coming up so Republicans are in a real bind here they need a plan and soon and what price and Ryan have given them so far seems to shift cost from the government to the people and from the healthy to the sick and fewer people are going to be covered so good luck fixing that Republicans oh and there's actually one more problem here because you remember how much you gave President Obama for saying you can keep your doctor uh let me remind you what Donald Trump has promised that you are going to do everybody's got to be covered this is an unrean thing for me to say because a lot of times they say no no the lower 25% they can't afford private but Universal healthare I am going to take care of everybody I don't care if it cost me votes or not everybody's going to be taken care of much better than they're taking care of now who pays for the government's going to pay for it but we're going to save so much money on the other side but for the most part it's going to be a private plan and people are going to be able to go out and negotiate great plans with lots of different competition with lots of competitors with great companies and they can have their doctors they can have their plans they can have everything they can have everything period so anything short of that is a disaster and insurers are going to need an answer soon Republicans so Tick Tock cuz you don't get to place told your way out of this one again and now this and now WCBS 2 meteorologist John Elliot dropped some famous names how weird my nephew will Carr hangs around with John grisham's kid now fun little fact my beloved late father's first cousin growing up they were buddies they're cousins he was a close friend of Ronald Reagan's fun fact Bridget moan watches Channel 2 she's probably watching right now sweet as they come uh and we appreciate her tuning in I love Madam Secretary it's a great show I met Tim Daly at an auto show Once El Richie is just a nice guy he's been in here he's a nice guy I just like the Payton Manning commercials he just seems like such a nice guy I actually met Norman Lear in the cafeteria downstairs here nicest guy ever and here at the CBS broadcast Center we have pictures around the building of some of the great Norman Le hits it was a very nice moment nice guy he had a salad and finally tonight a few words about the Supreme Court America's most respected adult assisted living community now as as you probably know there is currently a vacancy following the death last February of anonin Scalia and just a few weeks ago president Trump announced his nominee in a prime time reveal president Trump unveiling judge deal Gorsuch as his nominee to the Supreme Court yes Neil Gorsuch a man so blandly handsome it feels like saw him on page 14 of any JC Penny's catalog or as second lead and an erectile dysfunction ad he is he is aggressively Caucasian he's like a white Tim Kane but but there is there is a lot for Democrats to be annoyed about here not only is Gorsuch extremely conservative Republicans basically stole this seat because Meritt Garland who Obama nominated 11 months ago wasn't even given a hearing so the debate now is whether to Philip user Gorsuch or confirm a man whose place on the Supreme Court will always have an asterisk on it which actually puts our show in a tricky position as well as you may know we have an allog Supreme Court to reenact oral arguments since cameras are not allowed in the courtroom when Meritt Garland was nominated we held a vote to choose his dog and you the people chose Molly sadly Molly never got to serve she's on a farm up state with a lot of grass and toys to play with not unlike the actual Merit Garland so technically we should be finding a dog for Gorsuch now but we're not going to do that instead to reflect the fact that gorsuch's nomination is a historical aberration he will be getting an animal that will constantly remind us that it has no place in that spot on a dog Court what I'm saying is Gorsuch is getting a lobster that's right we're going paus and Claws up in this piece but we still need your help to pick a lobster gorsage so tonight we are asking you to advise and consent on the choice between these three glorious Lobster justices all of whom like Neil Gorsuch himself have absolutely no business being here first up there is Cindy clawford a strict constructionist who believes that life begins at the piercing of the abdomen with the first pair of pleopods in the middle there's Pinchers Von Shellington III a staunch opponent of judicial activism who pairs beautifully with a light taragan cream sauce and finally there's Mike his teeth are actually a gastric Mill located in his stomach and he's just a Lobster so Choose Wisely America because this is a lifetime appointment and lobsters can apparently live to be up to 100 years old who knew so visit our Twitter feed and choose Cindy clawford pinches or Mike or tweet your thoughts using the ashcor and order thank you so much for joining us we will see you next week good night w [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]