John Oliver’s knack for peppering serious subjects with biting humor has been going particularly strong lately. Last week, he covered the ill-advised Tokyo Olympics and the predatory lending practices that are increasingly involved with home renovations, but he made sure to sandwich in the Westminster Dog Show controversy during a delightful pair of interludes. This week’s edition of Last Week Tonight delivered a main segment that warned of fake health-care sharing ministries, which con unsuspecting enrollees into shelling out cash before, inevitably, denying that any benefits exist. Well, Oliver did a deep dive, and then he put a bow on it (around the 19:00 minute mark above) by introducing viewers to his “Mega Wife.”
Here is a look at Wanda Jo Oliver, who is the “Felicity Huffman to my William H. Macy,” apparently. Oliver took up the title of “Mega Reverend” and Rachel Dratch picked up the Wanda Jo wig. This actually isn’t the first time (nor the second time) that Dratch has popped onto Last Week Tonight, yet as a wise person once said, Christ on a cracker…
Dratch has appeared multiple times as Wanda Jo, once while creating a fake church called Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption back in 2015. Dratch also portrayed a psychic medium (in 2019) on the show, but this time, she’s back as Wanda Jo to help John fund the Our Lady of Perpetual Health church’s Johnny Care ministry, and the show has invented yet another fake website at FreedomFromHealthCare.org. It’s almost diabolical how good Oliver and Dratch are at putting on their evangelical faces to push JohnnyCare, which follows tenets like “I believe in not getting sick” and “I believe in not having a pre-existing condition.”
All of this, of course, is meant to underscore Oliver’s warning that the “lower-cost health insurance” that’s being pushed by these “ministries” turns out to be “not insurance at all,” and states are leaving their residents completely without recourse on how to clean up after they’ve fallen for these bogus institutes. The subject’s a tricky one, obviously, and hopefully, we’ll see the Oliver Effect work awareness, if not actual change.
Hey, I’ll bet these two have a real good time together…
