John Oliver sued by physician over rant on Medicaid and feces

John Oliver was sued for defamation Wednesday by a physician who claims the HBO host made false statements about him this past year on “Last Week Tonight,” when Oliver went on a rant about the privatization of Medicaid and its scatological effects.

The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, says that Oliver distorted comments made at a 2017 administrative hearing in Iowa by Brian Morley, a former medical director at the managed care organization AmeriHealth Caritas. During his testimony, Morley spoke about what kind of in-home care was appropriate for patients who soiled themselves.

“He thinks it’s OK if people have (excrement) on them for days,” Oliver exclaimed after airing clips of Morley’s remarks, and continued to insult the doctor. The episode has been viewed more than 3.5 million times on the “Last Week Tonight” YouTube page since it was posted on April 14.

“Defendants’ false accusations were designed to spark outrage, and they did,” the suit says. “Oliver’s feigned outrage at Dr. Morley was fabricated for ratings and profits at the expense of Dr. Morley’s reputation and personal well-being.”

Oliver, a British American who rose to fame as a correspondent on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” in the 2000s and 2010s, often uses “Last Week Tonight” to discuss serious topics with a mixture of comedy and invective. He devoted some of the April 2024 episode to criticizing managed care organizations (MCOs) such as AmeriHealth Caritas, which specializes in providing Medicaid and Medicare to low-income patients and families.

Before turning to Morley, Oliver played a 2018 AJ+ news clip about a quadriplegic cerebral palsy patient who had lost access to care, including medications and daily nurse visits. The segment stated that the Iowa man had gone six weeks without in-home bathing and diaper-changing that had previously been provided through Medicaid.

The patient’s situation is “obviously maddening,” Oliver told viewers. “And it doesn’t get any better when you hear a doctor at AmeriHealth, the MCO that took over in Iowa, explaining in a hearing about a similar patient just what the corporate thinking was about the necessity of keeping people clean.”

The show then cut to clipped audio of Morley’s 2017 comments in which he said, “People have bowel movements every day where they don’t completely clean themselves, and we don’t fuss over [them] too much. People are allowed to be dirty.” That quote was followed by a statement Morley made later in his testimony: “You know, I would allow him to be a little dirty for a couple days.”

“When I first heard that, I thought, ‘That has to be taken out of context.’ There’s no way a doctor, a licensed physician, would testify in a hearing that he thinks it’s okay if people have s- – on them for days,” Oliver said after playing the sound bite, before mentioning that the show had access to “the full hearing.”

“He said it. He meant it. And it made me want to punch a hole in the wall,” Oliver said.

Morley’s suit argues that Oliver intentionally misled viewers to believe the physician had denied services either to the quadriplegic person featured in the show or to a “similar patient” – someone with a “severe mental impairment” who required the use of a wheelchair, wore diapers, and could not bathe or change on his own.

In fact, the suit continues, Morley was talking about dealing with feces on a “hypothetical” patient “who is independently mobile.” At the time of Morley’s testimony, AmeriHealth was being scrutinized for its treatment of another Iowa-based cerebral palsy patient, Nathan McDonald. McDonald “was not confined to a wheelchair, was not incontinent, did not wear diapers,” Morley’s lawsuit notes.

The physician’s full testimony made clear that he would have supported care for the patient mentioned on “Last Week Tonight,” Morley’s lawsuit argues.

“In certain cases, yes, with the patient with significant comorbidities, you would want to have someone wiping them and getting the feces off,” Morley testified immediately before the quote “Last Week Tonight” broadcasted, according to the suit.

Morley’s legal team alleges that a senior producer on Oliver’s show contacted the physician before the segment aired and said they had reviewed the entire Medicaid hearing. “Defendants knowingly manipulated Dr. Morley’s testimony and then knowingly manipulated the context in which they placed it such to convey the defamatory meaning,” the lawsuit says.

Oliver and the show’s production company “knowingly and falsely conveyed that Dr. Morley testified that ‘it is okay’ to leave someone who is incontinent … in their ‘s- – for days,’” the lawsuit adds. The segment also “made Dr. Morley out to be the face” of illegal Medicaid denials.

Morley’s legal team said the comments caused “significant actual reputational, emotional, and mental damages.”

“They ascribe to Dr. Morley conduct that adversely impacts his profession as a physician … and otherwise calls into question his ability to work in the healthcare industry,” the suit argues. Morley is asking for damages exceeding $75,000 and for Oliver to remove the statements made in the video from all platforms available.

Representatives for Oliver did not immediately respond to a request for comment. HBO, which produces and distributes the show, declined to comment.

Morley later asked Oliver and his team to remove the statements from the episode, but they declined, according to the lawsuit.

This isn’t the first time that Oliver has faced a lawsuit over his show. In one case from 2018, coal-mining mogul Robert Murray sued Oliver for defamation after the late-night host called him a “geriatric Dr. Evil.” He also sued HBO and Time Warner in the case. A judge ruled that Oliver had a First Amendment right to criticize Murray and his company.