John Oliver sets up a new church to unmask the latest faith-based healthcare scam
Oliver's fake HCSM is based in Florida, because of course it is
TV News John Oliver
John Oliver is a proud ruiner. Showing first a commercial where people speak glowingly of a workaround to America’s undeniably broken and venal healthcare system made up of good-hearted folk chipping in to pay each others’ medical bills out of a spirit of fellowship and the common good, Oliver pulled off the bandage right away in exposing how the advertised health care sharing ministry industry is even more of a racket than our current, universally loathed health insurance system. “As you guessed because you’re learning about it from this show,” Oliver warned those beleaguered viewers Googling the local health care sharing ministry (HCSM), these rapidly multiplying religious boondoggles are significantly less useful than praying to your favorite celebrity for a retweet of your emergency medical debt GoFundMe.
How much less useful are we talking here? Well, as Oliver lays out in another of his weekly stories designed to spawn a sweaty barrage of damage-control corporate PR statements from these over-promising, under-delivering, essentially unregulated scams faith-based capitalist entities, about as useful as racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills and then getting on your knees to pray that a sketchy scheme with a sanctifying veneer of holiness doesn’t disqualify every penny because you smoked a cigarette that one time. Is that just another liberal heathen picking on the faithful? Well, yeah, probably. But it’s also 100 percent true when it comes to how HCSMs can legally discriminate against needy paying customers because of factors ranging from tobacco use, to alcohol or drug use, to being gay, to having sex outside of marriage, to literally anything they (and they alone) determine is outside the bounds of their particular, judgmentally lawsuit-proof brand of corporate Christianity.
Oh, and speaking of percentages, Oliver shined the representative villainy spotlight on the head of Aliera, a company intimately involved in administering numerous HCSMs, which takes some 84 percent of all monies raised from members for administrative costs/whatever it wants. (As lousy as real healthcare comanies arfe the ACA mandates that only 20 percent can go to overhead.) As Oliver noted upon showing a reporter questioning Aliera’s head about this monumental fleecing of Aliera’s ailing flock and receiving the hasty response, “I cant help you any further, I need to get out of town,” that’s pretty much 100 percent the opposite of what any respectable Jesus would do. Same goes for the CPAC speaker who chucklingly promised that the “freedom from insurance” promised by HCSMs like Liberty Healthshare (which sponsored the infamous conservative hate-festival) would “stick it to” those godless insurance companies. As Oliver cited, “self-satisfied CPAC laughter” is both chilling and a great indicator that someone is proposing something scammy and stupid.
But John Oliver is nothing if not a helper. A helper and a ruiner. That’s why he brought back his 100 percent actual wife Wanda Jo (who, admittedly does look like Rachel Dratch in a sculptural Tammy Fay wig) to announce the arrival of his own, Florida- and faith-based health care sharing ministry, JohnnyCare. By logging onto the website of the recently founded church of Our Lady Of Perpetual Health (sister scam of his and Dratch’s late Our Lady Of Perpetual Exemption), holier-than-thou members can gain access to the feel-good, cost-sharing beneficence of the church, in the form of the cheapest, three-Band Aid first aid kit their money can purchase in bulk. As he and Wanda Jo glowingly touted their holy alternative to evil, godless (yet actual) healthcare companies, they assured JohnnyCare subscribers that their $1.99 contribution will cover absolutely every medical misfortune imaginable—provided, of course, that members’ ailments are not caused by something outside the church’s arbitrary and blanket-disqualifying morality clauses.
As Oliver notes throughout his piece, American healthcare is, indeed, completely broken, and there is a pressing, literally life-or-death need to reform it or replace it with something better. (A single payer system, for example, which Oliver notes would solve a lot of the problems instantly but which is facing intractable resistance from suspiciously healthcare company-funded politicians and ignorant dipshits screeching the word “socialism” as loud as they can.) And yet, as Oliver showed with his own shockingly easy entry into the shady world of God-plated, predatorily greedy and lucratively judgmental HCSMs, simply tossing some religious language over your healthcare scam doesn’t make it any less evil.
49 Comments
Can’t wait to hear the morons complain how John Oliver is doing deep-dives into increasingly obscure issues, even though he explicitly jokes about making a show that does exactly that.
He keeps winning Emmys and we keep watching. That’s just science.
Would’ve changed “increasingly obscure” to “deliberately obscured”, otherwise yeah, I have seen too fucking many of those idiots.
I read that as “norons” for a second, and figured you’d coined a simple but useful term for, well, lots of people these days – anti-vaxxers, anti-single payer, you name it.
can i complain that he’s been focusing the last year or two on obscure American issues, when once upon a time, he was more international?
HBO used to be less provincial.
If Brazil, or Turkey, or some other country has an upcoming election where they’re probably going to stupidly elect a “strongman”, then I’m sure John Oliver will make some time to talk about international issues again.
Maybe he could cover the Australian election that’s unofficially happening at the end of this year, except even he’d probably find that too boring to make much of a story out of.
i’d like to see him do a piece on el salvador making bitcoin their official currency.
limiting his shows on maaybe one guy in any other foreign country every five years is a good way of isolating American brains inside their American-centric world view. And it wasn’t like that before.
It’s increasingly Thank God I’m Not From the US – the show, which gets a bit exhausting even its schadenfreude.
I love those people unaffected by anything because they’ve lived a sheltered suburban life and received tons of support, which they always conveniently forget about in straw man arguments against initiatives to inform people of actual issues.
That’s my brother. We grew up in a suburb (a lower-class one, but still), my parents gave him his down payment for his house, they’ve helped him out on mortgage more than once when he got laid off, they babysit his kids for free, and all he talks about is how hard he’s worked for everything he’s got. Ugh, he drives me nuts.And, like, I have no issue with people being lucky/privileged! I just get annoyed when those same people refuse to see how well they’ve been supported all their lives and then support policies that fuck over people who don’t have all that support.
It’s not so much the ignorant dipshits screeching the word “socialism” as much as it is the ignorant dipshits who listen.
At this point the default media landscape has shifted so heavily in a lot of places like Florida that it’s hard not to get the “anti-socialism” message by default.You can argue that every citizen in the US should be a careful consumer of the news, balancing just the right amount of skepticism and faith, doubting bad news and trusting good faith authorities. But when the mainstream political press is so incapable of serious analytical thought — their idiotic one sided unbalanced harangues on paying for Single Payer during the Democratic debates before the 2020 elections are exhibit one — I have a hard time blaming the average voter.
When voters have to go so far as understand the weird biases of individual political reporters at the NY Times and NBC like the Kens — Vogel and Dilanian — it’s hard to fault them too much. Figuring out how much to trust an NBC News report shouldn’t be like parsing the legal disclosures on a statement for your kid’s dental bill.
Definitely not helped by the small number of companies than own the vast majority of local news affiliates(both tv and print media), many of which, like Sinclair, have strong political agendas. If every source of information in your area is telling the same story, folks can’t be totally blamed for believing that story at face value. People like us who spend more time online have less excuse but even the echo chamber effect on the internet is challenging to overcome.I believe the things I do because they are so obviously right. But then so does everyone else.
“If every source of information in your area is telling the same story, folks can’t be totally blamed for believing that story at face value.”If Jonny is hit by a car and breaks his leg, I shouldn’t hear that from one source, hear that Johnny ran out in front of a car and broke his leg from a second, hear that Johnny got hit by a car while wearing a BLM t-shirt and broke his leg from a third, and hear that Johnny got hit by a car and broke his arm from a fourth. If the story is Johnny got his by a car and broke his leg ALL media sources SHOULD have the same story. It is interpretation of news that is the problem – this is a “both sides” issue – the news should just tell what happened. Leave the editorializing for the editorial page, obvious opinion shows, and the reader comments section.
Don’t forget the dipshits worth millions even billions who support the screeching dipshits with donations.
John Oliver has easily surpassed all of the competitors in this genre. The Bob Murray and Dana White segments are pretty epic. Added benefit, he gave us “angry” Adam Driver
hard to believe there was a time when he was Jon Stewart’s understudy, isn’t it? and I had forgotten about the Bob Murray thing, that piece of shit…scorching him for his SLAPP suits, only to trigger a SLAPP suit against John Oliver for stating facts and satire. But at least we got the “Eat Shit Bob” dance number, which was fantastic.
healthcare system made up of good-hearted folk chipping in to pay each others’ medical bills out of a spirit of fellowship and the common goodIf that’s your bag, if that’s your idea of a functional way to run a society, if that’s the sort of shtick that gets you to part with your hard-earned money… well you can just get the hell out of the U!S!A! because that’s how other countries do it. It works OK and you don’t even have to bother any deities about it.
Well, no, you’re missing the really important part. It’s making sure my money isn’t going to anyone that I feel is undeserving of basic medical care due to their unholy “lifestyle”. That kind of hyper-judgmental holier-than-thou fuck you is a feature, not a bug.
what could be more enticing for the average shitty evangelical who likes to unironically sit in judgment of others who are arguably better people in every way? maybe indirectly holding the power of life and death (or at least, crippling medical debt and/or bankruptcy) over them? Wow that’s gotta be intoxicating.
One of the people featured in Oliver’s segment says essentially that – “I don’t want my money going to someone who smokes” – and I turned to my husband and said, “well, I’ve got to hand it to her for saying what all of these assholes who oppose universal healthcare are thinking, I guess.”
It’s a weird, fundamental aspect of right-wing thought that they’d rather 1000 deserving people be denied vital services as long as it means one scumbag won’t get something they don’t feel that he deserves. It’s not even a dollars-and-cents thing, they’ll happily pay a whole lot more if it means they get to “punish” someone who they don’t think should receive services.
The cruelty is the point, as they say.
It’s kinda funny since that’s also the entire premise of insurance, it’s just that people have a fixed idea that profiteering is somehow more efficient than governance.
Relevant crossposting: https://kotaku.com/u-s-healthcare-is-so-trash-this-game-s-localization-ne-1847169929
We could fix this shit, but we apparently prefer mediocrity. Meanwhile, other countries are like “What the fuck is GoFundM-…wait, you use it for HEALTH CARE? Which costs HOW much!?”
I also wish the average American with health insurance who is opposed to “Medicare for All” would take a few minutes and exercise their math neurons to compare what they currently pay out of pocket for their health insurance (including premiums, co-pays, deductibles, etc.) to what people in countries with universal health care, because I’d bet the costs are a lot closer than they think. (Knowing them like I think I do, I assume they’d say “I’d happily pay one penny less to maintain the current shitty system as long as I know I’m not paying for anyone else.”)
The metrics are clear on this – universal health care in nations one would consider economic peers to the United States spend far LESS money and have equitable or often better results that we do. The problem is those with great insurance plans DO have better outcomes that those people in Universal Health Care nations – but that group of people with great insurance is steadily declining. The USA is a two-tiered health system now – those of us at the top are receiving the best care the world has to offer, while those NOT in the top tier get second- or third-world health care.
At this point things like math aren’t even in the equation. For one thing, heath care economics are very complicated, which means any number can be twisted to prove any point. But more importantly, a lot of people opposing “socialized healthcare” are beneficiaries of Medicare and Medicaid entitlements. It’s not just about closing people out of the benefits that you yourself receive because there isn’t enough to go around. It’s that opposing healthcare access is a way to express racism without discussing race, full stop.
I recently heard a commercial on my local radio station for one of these things so they are definitely aggressively trying to grow. My scam radar instantly went off but they must be making money from someone.
Universal healthcare would solve so many problems. So many people don’t go to doctors for minor things because they can’t afford to. They wait until the problem gets bad and life threatening instead of early detection. It would also help with mental health issues. Our current system is literally killing people. Not to mention all the billing headaches. I had my gall bladder removed last summer. Two weeks ago I got a bill for $170 for something related to that. The bill says they submitted it to my insurance. I go to the insurance and there is nothing matching that. I go to the billing company’s site, it says I don’t owe anything. Several months ago I got a bill for $1200+ so I called the company and they were like, “we’ll refile it with insurance” and never heard anything again. How is this any way to run things?
I had my gall bladder removed in March, and haven’t had to worry about bills at all, because I belong to a health care sharing ministry live in Canada, and every aspect of the procedure – from initial consult at my local emergency department to ambulance ride to the tertiary care hospital an hour away to a battery of tests to operation – was covered by universal health care.But that would never be an option in the States because socialism, right?
But that would never be an option in the States because socialism, right? Yep. We’re pretty firmly in “Sure it sucks, but it’s AMERICAN!” territory. We cannot even decide whether we should attempt to make health care more affordable across the board.
If James Madison didn’t want us begging strangers for money on the internet for life saving surgery then he should have written that into the constitution! Obviously, it’s far too late to make any changes now. Wouldn’t want to impact the bottom line over at Cigna freedom.
I think it’s less “socialism” because the average American anti-socialism derp absolutely cannot define or explain socialism. I think it’s more of the “I got mine, fuck everyone else” mindset that infects so many Americans’ minds. A stinky amalgam of social Darwinism, capitalism, and American exceptionalism, along with a really appalling lack of empathy (however, amusingly, this can all be undone pretty quickly once the aforementioned anti-socialism derp suffers directly as a result of not having health insurance).
I had my gall bladder removed last year, and the total bill was over $44,000 – but I only had to pay $2900 out of pocket because I have a terrific health insurance plan through my job.
Which is stupid. From both ends of that equation.
Same thing , but I live in Ireland . The pain ( pre op) was terrible ,so having to think of shit like “can I afford this , or should I just neck some painkillers and hope it goes away” would be insane.
I’m pretty sure it’s worse than that. Despite all of the religious windbags claiming that American spirituality is rooted in Christianity, American spirituality is rooted in the monetary value assigned to work. It was true of the Puritans, it was true of slavery, and it’s true of our healthcare system. Depriving economically vulnerable people of their health and safety shores up the cultural belief that health, safety, and financial stability are inseparable.
Didn’t know these existed before, but I would actually be shocked to learn my parents aren’t on Liberty right now.
A religious family member suggested I look into this. All the “lifestyle” rules are ridiculous. The one I researched didn’t cover STD tests at all, which is wild! I’m sure their mindset is that their members will never have sex outside of marriage so there is no concern.
Growing up, my dad would mutter “time to fleece the flock” every time we witnessed any sort of church-related goings-on. Still think that’s the most concise and prescient summation of religion possible.
Chiming in to point out that universal coverage and single payer aren’t the same thing, and many countries achieve the former without the latter.
“The political crisis we are facing is simple. American commerce, law, finance, and politics is organized around cheating people.” – Matthew Stoller, August 2017
just as American Jesus would have said, “help others whenever you can, unless they’re Muslims or Buddhists or Jews, then fuck those guys.” More proof that organized religion (especially as practiced in the US) is really just an organized crime syndicate with a patina of morality.
As someone who still considers herself a Christian, but hasn’t been to church in decades (except for the occasional wedding), I sadly have to agree with you.
The people who screech the loudest about religion seem to be the furthest from doing what Jesus actually told us to do.
I never took the evangelicals seriously to begin with—way too much hypocrisy and unearned moral superiority for my taste—but the way they bent over backwards to support T***p, in spite of his being a literal anti-Christ in every possible way, made it impossible for me to look at them the same way ever again. They love him and overlook all his bullshit because he’s “pro-life” when I would bet all the money in my pocket he has paid for at least one abortion in his life and then stiffed the model for the money he promised her, but mainly because he made them feel “seen” and important again. All I saw was a cheap con artist hustling a bunch of rubes to get what he wanted from them.
Earlier than that – I was sickened at the way Reagan seduced the religious right. Talk about con jobs, that was one big time (piled on top of his treason re: the Iranian hostages).Trump was just the tail end of that seduction.
. (As lousy as real healthcare comanies arfe the ACA mandates that only 20 percent can go to overhead.)E. D. I. T.
I’ve been on Medi-Share for a couple of years now, feel free to ask me anything / insult me for my life choices / ask conspicuously leading questions.I joined up mostly because of cost. ~$800/month not-a-premium with a $3500 not-a-deductible for two adults and multiple children. There is a provider network, so it functions more like regular insurance. The network gets you insurance-like discounts, but you pay out of pocket until you hit your not-a-deductible, then they cover everything they say they’ll cover. Brought a kid into the world last year with it and it worked as expected.I picked Medi-Share because they seemed the most normal and have a good track record. They don’t have reinsurance which is the big risk, but they publish their numbers every year and have never had a payment missed because of funding issues. The landscape was different before the individual mandate went away as well; I think there were only 5 companies at the time.
There are things I like about it and things I don’t like about it. Cost is the biggest advantage, but it’s also been really nice to not have to re-learn all the lingo and pick a new marketplace plan every year, which is what I had been doing. If you’re not familiar with marketplace plans, the premium reimbursement is kinda bad too: you either have to know exactly what you’re making or you risk owing at tax time. I’ve been on the edge of CHIP eligibility, but there’s the overhead of income reporting and the risk that you make too much and owe a lot back.There’s also a bit of empowerment here. With Marketplace plans the only thing I can do to control my costs is not smoke. My sharing plan will give me a discount if I get my weight down (and charge me more if I don’t). There are lots of idealists in the comment sections who talk about what the system should be, but pragmatically speaking I’m buying a product, and it’s nice to have some control.Could go on but I’ll leave it at that for now.
Why is God involved in health care? He never even finished nursing school!