Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: James Comey, kidney dialysis, and New Zealand

At the jump of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on Sunday, it was fairly clear that James Comey would be a primary conversation subject. How could he not be? The former FBI Director found himself in that position earlier in the week, and Oliver had the challenge of trying to put together some of the pieces of what happened.

There are so many people, outlets, and late-night talk shows with an opportunity to discuss this further already, so from that vantage point Oliver had some struggles trying to match much of what was already said. Nonetheless, he did his best delivering a segment that was still entertaining as he placed of course some blame on the President, but then also others who were unwilling to acknowledge just how messed p much of the entire situation was.

From here (or after another amusing chapter in the saga of Eminem versus New Zealand), the show then transferred over to the main subject for the evening: Kidney dialysis.

As far as surprising subject matters go, this has to be near the top of the list — it’s a medical issue, and certainly not one commonly discussed. That’s one of the reasons why it was here. There are more Americans at this point reliant on it than any other country in the world. However, costs are astronomical and certainly benefit the rich corporations.

Still, there is some government history in actually helping Americans pay for dialysis, and some of it stems back to President Nixon. The help is now not widespread enough, but this was a fantastic bit of information unknown to many people out there. DaVita, a group that owns many dialysis centers, was one of the main targets over the course of the segment for their decision-making and practices.

This segment was, as a whole, informative, but also fairly funny in a way that most Oliver takedowns are. The Comey segment will likely be remembered more, if for no other reason than that this is the portion of the show that had more familiar subject matter. Hopefully, watching this segment does allow more people out there to do further research on dialysis in order to further understand how it works and draw some of their own conclusions. This segment felt more like a door opening than a full-scale resolution.

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