HBO’s John Oliver faces lawsuit from health insurance executive over Medicaid monologue

A health insurance executive filed a defamation lawsuit against HBO’s John Oliver on Friday, claiming the liberal comic falsely told viewers he believed "it’s OK if people have s--t on them for days" when discussing the healthcare needs of a young man who relies on diapers and in-home bathing services to maintain proper hygiene. 

Former AmeriHealth Caritas medical director Dr. Brian Morley believes an April 2024 segment on "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" about Americans losing Medicaid health care coverage destroyed his reputation and personal well-being. Oliver spent the entire episode sounding the alarm about "Medicaid unwinding" with a lengthy monologue that suggested Managed Care Organizations such as AmeriHealth Caritas have worked to take away healthcare. 

When examining the situation of a young patient who lost access to in-home bathing and diaper changing, Oliver played an edited audio excerpt from a 2017 testimony in which Morley said about a "similar patient", "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. I would allow him to be dirty for a couple of days." 

Oliver then said, "F--k that doctor with a rust canoe, I hope he gets tetanus of the balls," and told the HBO audience the testimony was authentic. 

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"When I first heard that, I thought that had to have been taken out of context. There is no way a doctor, a licensed physician, would testify in a hearing that he thinks it’s OK if people have s--t on them for days. So, we got the full hearing, and I’m not going to play it, I’m just going to tell you, he said it, he meant it, and it made me want to punch a hole in the wall," Oliver told viewers.

In a lawsuit filed Friday in New York’s Southern District that also named Partially Important Productions as a defendant, Morley alleged that Oliver "falsely" told viewers he "testified in a Medicaid hearing that ‘he thinks it’s okay if people have s--t on them for days,’" and "illegally denied Medicaid services to—a young man who has severe mental impairment, was harnessed in a wheelchair, wears diapers, and required in-home bathing and diaper changing because he could do neither himself."

Morley’s lawyer wrote in the filing that Oliver’s "false accusations were designed to spark outrage, and they did."

"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," the lawsuit said. 

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"Defendants expressly asserted that they were not taking Dr. Morley’s testimony out of context, knowing they had intentionally manipulated the context and their broadcast to convey a defamatory meaning that they knew was untrue," the suit continued, noting that if Oliver truly wanted the full hearing he would have known he was not speaking about an immobile or bedridden person, and that "Morley’s testimony stood for the opposite of the defamatory meanings they ascribed to it."

"Morley did not equate wiping poorly with leaving anyone sitting in their own feces for days—whether disabled, incontinent, wearing diapers or not. He testified to the opposite. He testified that people who, for instance, are immobile, laying in their own bowel movements, cannot toilet transfer, or cannot bathe themselves—in other words, people like the individual Defendants depicted—require significant in-home care, including ‘to have someone wiping them and getting the feces off’ to ensure ‘medical safety,’" the lawsuit stated. 

The lawsuit alleges that Oliver also knew the patient Morley was actually talking about "was not confined to a wheelchair, was not incontinent, did not wear diapers, independently toilet transferred, was independently mobile, could change his or her own clothes, bathed him or herself, and did not require in-home diaper changing or assistance to bathe generally," but failed to disclose that to the HBO audience. 

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Oliver also failed to disclose that Morley approved six in-home visits per week to the actual patient, according to the lawsuit, which claims "Last Week Tonight" took the testimony out of context. 

Morley believes Oliver’s accusations are false and were made negligently with actual malice. He has demanded that HBO retract the "false and defamatory" statements and is seeking "reputational, emotional, and mental damages in an amount exceeding $75,000 and to be determined at trial."

Morley is also seeking punitive damages. 

HBO and parent company Warner Bros. Discovery did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.