John Oliver explains the new GOP health care plan as only John Oliver can. Update: The CBO weighs in.

Courtesy of Slate:  

On Sunday night’s Last Week Tonight, John Oliver broke down some of the major issues with AHCA—the “Ted Cruz of healthcare legislation.” One of the biggest is that the proposed system of flat-tax credits could really harm lower-income Americans while benefitting insurance companies and the wealthy. And while Paul Ryan may be excited about “defederalizing,” “block-granting,” and “capping,” pushing up to $370 billion worth of Medicaid costs onto the states over the next ten years doesn’t quite get Oliver’s engines revving in quite the same way, because Ryan’s plan could mean millions of the country’s poorest citizens will lose their coverage. 

In fact, many of the people who will be hurt the most by the AHCA are lower-income Americans, older Americans and those living in rural areas, people who broadly fall into the category of Trump’s America. “Which is pretty frustrating,” noted Oliver. “It’s like if the people of Pompeii voted for the volcano.”

Actually you know a conservative health care bill is dead in the water, when both Rand Paul and Sarah Palin say it is dead in the water.

Which is a good thing, since the creators of this plan are essentially the very definition of a "death panel."

Update: I wrote this yesterday before the CBO had released its report. Now that it has things appear even worse that John Oliver reported.

Here is how Vox's Ezra Klein explained it: 

The AHCA would increase the uninsured population by about 24 million people — which is more people than live in New York state. But the raw numbers obscure the cruelty of the choices. The policy is particularly bad for the old, the sick, and the poor. It is particularly good for the rich, the young, and the healthy. 

Here, in short, is what the AHCA does. The bill guts Medicaid, halves the value of Obamacare’s insurance subsidies, and allows insurers to charge older Americans 500 percent more than they charge young Americans. 

Then it takes the subsidies that are left and reworks them to be worth less to the poor and the old, takes the insurers that are left and lets them change their plans to cover fewer medical expenses for the sick, and rewrites the tax code to offer hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to the rich. As Dylan Matthews writes, it is an act of class warfare by the rich against the poor. 

The result isn’t just 24 million fewer people with insurance: Of those who remain insured, the pool is tilted toward younger, healthier people who need help less, because many of the older, poorer people who need the most help can no longer afford insurance. As German Lopez notes, a 64-year-old making $26,500 would see his premiums rise by 750 percent. 750 percent! And with that 64-year-old gone, premiums are a little bit lower, because the pool is a little bit younger.

Grim isn't it?

Currently the White House is trying to discredit this CBO report, but as it turns out their own internal analysis was even worse:

A White House analysis of the GOP plan to repeal and replace Obamacare shows even steeper coverage losses than the projections by the Congressional Budget Office, according to a document viewed by POLITICO on Monday. 

The executive branch analysis forecast that 26 million people would lose coverage over the next decade, versus the 24 million CBO estimates.

Donald Trump promised that nobody would lose coverage and that more people would be insured.

Of course only an idiot would have believed he was telling the truth.