On AM Joy, former Romney adviser Avik Roy was enthusing about the intricacies of the Trumpcare bill when David Cay Johnston, Trump expert and publisher of DCReport.org, pushed his way into the discussion.
"Can we step back out of the deep weeds here?" Johnston said.
"Donald Trump once said to me, 'Healthcare should be like the roads. You need it, it's there.
"We already have a Rube Goldberg machine. Let's simplify all of this. We need to reform health care. No reasonable student of this fails to understand our health care system isn't a health care system -- it's a sick care system that kills people, it's inefficient, it allows people to game the system.
"And let me give a simple number. We spend 6 percentage points of our economy more than the French, who have the best health care system in the world with no out-of-pocket costs or virtually none," he said.
"If we had the French system, it would be the equivalent of everybody who makes less than $500,000 a year paying no income taxes. That's how much we would save. If tax savings is the goal here, then let's go adopt the French system and transfer into it and we can eliminate the income tax for 99% of all Americans.
"The idea that we're going to these tax credits -- why are tax credits always the solution to every problem? Why not have a simple system? You're an American, you have a card, you need health care, you go and get health care. and then the debate is simply how robustly do we want to fund it. Make people wait two hours to see a doctor or two days -- we can have that discussion."
