John Oliver took a jab at “soon-to-be business daddy” David Ellison on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight.
The HBO show’s host did a deep dive into UnitedHealthCare record of denying customers much-needed health care, starting off by noting that Luigi Mangione is due to be sentenced in December for killing CEO Brian Thompson, an act that many people rejoiced amid their frustration with the company.
Oliver gave several examples of patients who were denied crucial health care, including a cancer patient whose parents ultimately had to fork over $95,000 for due to UHC’s denials.
Here he took the opportunity to take a jab at Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance, which is in the process of trying to get regulator approval to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery, the current parent company of HBO.
“Now in the end her parents paid $95,000 out of pocket to cover the treatment, which in happy news did actually work, but having access to wealthy parents just cannot be the system to get badly needed healthcare, even if it is apparently the system that lets you be in charge of HBO,” Oliver said, showing a photo of Ellison.
“Yeah, my soon-to-be business daddy has a literal business daddy,” he added, as the image zoomed out to show Ellison with his father Larry, the billionaire owner of tech giant Oracle, and the man who has agreed to personally backstop the $40.4 billion in equity financing connected to the Paramount-WBD deal.
“And to be very clear,” Oliver continued, “I deeply respect that and I would never make fun of you for it, unlike that pesky Stephen Colbert.”