John Oliver returned with the season premiere of Last Week Tonight on Sunday and he went directly after critics of “Medicare for All.” Oliver blasted the “broken” American health care system and called for major changes.
“I shit on Britain a lot on this show, and I’m not going to stop anytime soon. But one thing Britain does well is the National Health Service,” Oliver said in his 20-minute monologue. “I’ll be honest with you, I’ve never had a bad experience, and I don’t know anyone who has. But, since moving to America, I don’t think I’ve met anyone who doesn’t have at least one insurance industry horror story.
“I will own all the things about it that are difficult, including the fact that politically, it would be incredibly hard to get passed. But in return, anyone who’s resistant to significant change is going to have to own all the flaws of our current system. One in which, when Americans get sick, they can find themselves comparison shopping with a burst appendix, flipping a coin between life-saving medications, and praying they can come up with a catchy enough hashtag to cover their care.”
Oliver then appeared to take a direct swipe at leading moderate candidate Pete Buttigieg, who has made “Medicare for All Who Want it” a leading slogan of his campaign.
“What Buttigieg is referring to when he says Medicare for All Who Want It is basically the public option. That is where the government doesn’t replace the private insurance system. It just introduces its own plan that would compete with it. It would definitely be an improvement over what we have now. The problem is, it would leave so much of our current insurance infrastructure with all of its problems intact,” Oliver said.
“So, that’s kind of like being offered either a sh*t sandwich or a slightly smaller sh*t sandwich with guac. I mean, I guess I’ll take the second one if you’re asking, but honestly the lack of guac wasn’t really my main f*cking concern.”
Buttigieg and other leading Democrats will take the stage in Nevada on Wednesday, February 17 ahead of the Nevada caucus.
