John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight turned a warning into a punchline—and a toll-free woodworking lesson—as part of Sunday night’s main story on Medicare Advantage.
The segment took aim at the misleading ads and predatory practices behind the private insurance plans that now cover more than half of U.S. seniors. Oliver explained how insurers profit by over-diagnosing patients and denying care, calling Medicare Advantage “private insurance with all the problems of private insurance, but applied to a more vulnerable population.”
To drive the point home, the show aired a parody Medicare Advantage ad starring real-life couple Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally. In it, the two played a bickering pair debating whether to sign up for a plan that boasts “doctors that are mostly just grocery stores, local middle schools, a JCPenney, and an abandoned Chuck E. Cheese’s.” The fake commercial ended with a familiar call to action: a toll-free number promising more information—and this warning: “Don’t call this or any other number on your screen.”
Those viewers who called it were rewarded with this message from Offerman himself: “Hello there. First, I think you were explicitly told not to call this number, but you’ve clearly done it anyway. So to make use of this time, here are a few woodworking tips…”
The minute-long message continues with Offerman proceeding to share three actual carpentry tips—on grain direction, reinforcing joints, and the difference between penetrating and film-forming finishes—before signing off with a dry, “Please never call this number again. Goodbye.”
While the content of his message may seem out of left field, Offerman is famously an accomplished woodworker whose love of the craft predates his acting career. Listen to his entire message below:
I noticed that the number wasn’t a 555 number so I was tempted to write it down and check it out.