The office of House Speaker Paul Ryan wrote a disapproving email to Seth Meyers over how the late-night host characterized the American Health Care Act, the Republican bill to overhaul the US healthcare system. So Meyers decided to answer it on his show.
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Seth Meyers fires back at an email from Paul Ryan complaining about his show
House Speaker Paul Ryan disapproved of how Seth Meyers characterized the Republican healthcare bill, but Meyers didn't back down.
"Unlike Republicans and their healthcare bill, we actually read the whole email," Meyers said on Monday's "Late Night," a reference to the acknowledgement by several members of Congress that they hadn't read the AHCA in full.
"This is great, because we genuinely appreciate the engagement and would love to have Speaker Ryan on the show," he continued. "Suffice to say, we don't agree with the email and we thought it'd be helpful if we took a second to respond to some of their claims point by point."
The host then discussed a few of his comments that Ryan's office took issue with, including the assessment that the bill was rushed and represents a huge tax break for the wealthy and its allowance for states to waive protections for those with preexisting conditions.
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"The bottom line is this," Meyers said. "Republicans rushed this bill through for ideological reasons, despite the fact that every analysis showed that it would cut taxes for the wealthy, raise premiums for the older, sicker people, and take millions off insurance. If they really wanted to solve our healthcare problems, they could start by looking for examples from other countries."
Meyers then showed a clip of President Donald Trump telling Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in a meeting last week, "You have better healthcare than we do."
Australia has universal single-payer healthcare, a version of which the US has in the form of Medicare, which Meyers said "insures everyone for a fraction of the cost."
Watch Seth Meyers respond to Paul Ryan's email below:
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