It’s Been a Busy Week
While some in the mainstream media have been crushing their pearls to dust complaining that Democrats are being too mean to Republicans by calling the political party once more nominating a twice-impeached seditionist felon and rapist “weird,” John Oliver kicked off this week’s show by offering up some empirically weird evidence. Like recent GOP candidates Royce White and Hung Cao. The former proudly tells audiences he’d vote for Donald Trump if Trump “took a sh*t” on a campaign stage, while the latter decries the fact (note: not a fact) that Monterey, California is currently undergoing a complete government takeover by witches. Of course, those are just a couple of fringe weirdos, albeit ones who actually won their recent primaries because Republicans are f**king weird.
But Oliver wasn’t content with mocking Wisconsin GOP nominee and notably bigoted California carpetbagger Eric Hovde (“Ned Flanders without the raw sexual charisma”) for demanding that Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin join him in a half-naked throwdown in a frigid local lake to prove… something. (Hovde also attempted to win over some Black podcasters by assuring them he understood Juneteenth because he’s been to Africa.) No, Oliver went straight to the top of the Republican ticket, showing universally repellent Veep pick J.D. Vance coming after surging Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris… for laughing. Scolding the current Vice President for appearing to have actual human joy in her heart at the unprecedented love and support she’s received since taking over for Joe Biden on the campaign trail, Vance’s dead-eyed condemnation of such relatable pleasure was, according to Oliver, akin to Vance ushering his kids off too Sea World by reminding them that marine biologists had to come up with a special term for when dolphins murder porpoises, seemingly for sport. (It’s “porpicide,” and, seriously, what the hell, dolphins?)
As for Donald Trump himself, dopes anyone really need to be sold on “Trump is f**king weird” as a concept at this point? As Oliver responded to Trump’s weirdness denial incredulously, “Nobody’s ever called you weird? Babe, be serious.” He then went on to offer an abridged greatest hits album of Trump weirdness, from trying to buy Greenland, to staring down an eclipse, to all those times he expressed his patriotism by publicly molesting American flags. Sure, Oliver might have gone deeper into just how bizarrely Donald Trump routinely spouts completely untrue, verging on certifiably bananas, things on the reg, but it’s only a half-hour show and he had a main story to get to.
Our Main Story Tonight
“Our main story tonight is about death,” may not be the most crowd-pleasing of openers, but that’s Last Week Tonight for you. Oliver himself noted, that the impending chill of a giant truth-bomb concerning the concept of death represented “almost an offensive parody of this show.” And, to be fair, the main story wasn’t exactly about the inevitable specter of everlasting nothingness that awaits us all, but the predictably corrupt capitalist death-adjacent heist daily perpetrated by unscrupulous hospice companies.
For those viewers fortunate enough not to know (yet) what hospice is, Oliver helpfully explained that the once-groundbreaking ideal that dying people should receive responsible and comforting pain management and care came from his home country, of all places. And while “exporting a new way to die,” might seem right up that colonial power’s alley, historically, Oliver noted how the relatively recent prevalence of hospice care has been a net positive for the terminally ill and their families.
And yet. (There’s always a bloody “and yet.”) Oliver went hard after the rampant abuses riddling the hospice industry, including but not limited to: roping in not-dying elderly people to pad Medicare billing; massive over-billing; sneaking into pandemic-era old age homes to take selfies and curry favor with health care workers; stringing along supposedly dying patients for as long as possible, even those who aren’t actually terminal; bribing doctors to throw as many patients their way as possible, regardless of condition; outright not performing the care they’re over-billing the government to provide; lying to patients about how long they have to live; sending priests to lie to patients they’re sicker than they were; dumping patients out of needed hospice care because they’re costing too much; and isolated instances of abuse and neglect too horrific to get into. (Oliver exploding that hospice care “should not sound like a scene from a f**king Saw movie,” should give some idea though.)
As ever, the true culprit is the good old free marketplace. (That is if you gloss over the worthless greed-heads behind all this grandparent-preying evil, like the hospice agency head whose lawyer tried to use his client’s massive cocaine use as a defense for years of fraud.) Oliver—wordlessly underscoring the “Republicans are weird” theme—showed how the Connecticut GOP killed a bill merely proposing a study of hospice abuses recently, with Oliver singling out state Senator Rob Sampson for special mockery. Apart from lobbing the all-purpose “socialism” grenade at the issue of whether a clearly troubled industry should undergo any scrutiny whatsoever, Oliver also noted how Sampson was the lone “no” vote on a Connecticut resolution stating that the women tortured and executed during the state’s 17th century witch hunts didn’t actually do anything wrong. (Somewhere, Hung Cao stands up and salutes.) As explanation, Sampson said that America shouldn’t be made to feel bad for the empirically evil and hateful things it actually did, which sums up the Republican Party better than even Oliver could manage.
As for what’s to be done about a system where “live discharges” (in which a supposedly dying hospice patient leaves hospice care live and well) acts as a reliable barometer of industry fraud instead of a medical miracle, Oliver offered up his usual roster of common sense proposals that industry lobbying and witch-fearing GOP weirdness will make difficult to enact. Maybe requiring hospice companies (like scandal-plagued Vitas, started by Florida sex trafficker suspect Matt Gaetz’s dad) to undergo inspection more than once every three years. Or making unannounced inspection visits a regular thing, perhaps to catch out the 112 California hospice companies who claim the same address as their physical headquarters. Or, hey, maybe shutting down the largely unregulated process of starting a hospice company until officials can get a handle on just why some patients are finding out that they’ve been enrolled in hospice without their knowledge. (Yes, a real thing, and a practice which disqualifies them from receiving needed, life-saving medical care.)
Perhaps in an attempt to lighten up an inevitably depressing/blood-boiling segment, Oliver ended with a fake hospice company commercial that illustrated many of Last Week Tonight‘s points, and which enlisted the help of certified funny people Rob Huebel, Erinn Hayes, Sarah Baker, Rob Corddry (playing a grinning slimeball as only he can), and Bunny Levine. Parodying a distressingly sexual hospice ad from earlier in the episode, Hayes and Huebel are a middle-aged couple using hospice care as some manner of end-of-life kink, while Baker tends to her ailing grandmother and wonders why their company has sent a live flamingo in lieu of any licensed medical help. (It makes sense when you watch the main story.) Meanwhile, Corddry, whose company (like industry giant Chemed) started out as a plumbing enterprise, rakes in literal piles of cash from his company’s unscrupulous practices, and laughs off a cameraman’s disgusted prediction by stating smugly, “There is no hell, fella.” Well, maybe not, but getting exposed by John Oliver is sure to at least make some sleazy executives’ lives a whole lot worse until they have to find out.
And Now This…
Last Week Tonight goes to the “vapid local news chatter” well often. That’s not a criticism, since watching some half-informed so-called newspeople sweatily attempt to fill time between teleprompter copy is guaranteed, illustrative comedy. Here, Oliver focused on anchors’ awkward banter about the just-concluded Summer Olympics, with one musing how everyone will “go back to hating each other” without the games to keep us united (ask champion boxer Imane Khelif how that whole “unity” thing went), another bemoaning the fact that the team will have to actually do a full news broadcast now, and other stifling small talk. The kicker came when one anchor made the best-worst possible segue from praising the glory of U.S. Olympic excellence straight to a story about the rotting whale carcass washed up on a local beach. Maybe just have anchors sit in silence between stories? It can’t be any more excruciating.
Cardus Endus
Those red-faced, smiling heroes featured on tonight’s end title card are astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who are not—and NASA would like to stress that unequivocally—not stranded on the International Space Station. Oh sure, Williams and Wilmore were only expecting to be aboard the ISS for eight days when their shuttle docked there in June, and a malfunction raised the serious question of whether said shuttle would bring them home alive. (Sort of a space shuttle’s whole deal.) And, okay, they might be stuck up there in zero gravity for as much as eight months, rather than eight days. (Their return may hinge on a successful mission from Elon Musk’s Space X, though, so they might not want to make any concrete September plans.) Still, NASA would like you all—and Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore—to rest easy in the knowledge that the astronauts are in no way stranded in space. Not. At. All.
Last Lines Tonight
“Obviously, it is a good thing when someone lives longer than their prognosis. This show is not pro-death. [Flashes photo of Henry Kissinger] Let’s be honest, sometimes we are, but most of the time, we are not.”
On the fact that most hospice companies enroll patients expecting them to live beyond the six-month medicare limit
“Our main story tonight involves death, the answer to the question, ‘What does the interior of an IHOP smell like?'”
john oliver, not getting free pancakes
“There is a lot of hospice fraud. A sentence, by the way, recently voted “least hot” by Things to Whisper Into Your Partner’s Ear During Sex magazine.”
john oliver, telling viewers to strap in
“I didn’t think Gaetz had parents in the traditional sense. I just assumed someone jizzed on a Goodfellas poster.”
On accused sex criminal Matt gaetz, whose dad’s company paid a $75 million fraud settlement
“Do you know how wretched you have to be for a middle-aged Midwestern woman to call you ‘the lowest form of life?'”
On a former employee of convicted Illinois hospice fraud and cocaine vacuum seth Gillman
When 100 percent of people in your care are leaving alive, you’re not a hospice, you’re a hotel. And, statistically, a very safe one.”
on companies’ inflated live discharge rates
“The only way it could have been more on the nose is if it were called, Surprise, Bitch, You’re in Hospice hospice.”
ON a woman losing her healthcare after being fraudulently enrolled in something called Revelation hospice
“And those just aren’t things you should be able to lose without realizing it. Chemotherapy isn’t like a set of keys. Or the wife of the head of the Church of Scientology. Where’s Shelly, David? Where’s Shelly? It’s been 17 years, I’m starting to think something bad’s happened.”
john oliver, poking the very litigious bear
“Bumming everyone out with depressing facts about things you like isn’t how you become Vice President. It’s how you put people to sleep once a week while aging like a wartime president. Get the f**k off my corner!”
On J.D. Vance being a terminal killjoy
