Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Season 12 Episode 27
Aired on October 26, 2025
Main segment: Medicare Advantage
Other segments: Trump’s commutation of George Santos’s prison sentence, Trump’s demolition of the White House East Wing, and extrajudicial executions in the Caribbean
Guests: Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally (a real life couple, playing a couple in a mock ad – the mock ad contained a real live phone number featuring an outgoing voicemail message by Offerman)
John Oliver details what Medicare Advantage is, why it basically has all the pitfalls of private insurance, and the economic significance of novelty slippers. You’ll see.
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JOHN: Our main story tonight concerns healthcare. Ostensibly the subject matter of the pit, which is slightly about healthcare, but much more about the gentle head tilt of Noah Wy on behalf of several members of my staff. Engulf me in that hoodie, you casual Friday hero. Specifically, we’re going to talk about Medicare, the federal program for those 65 or older or with qualifying disabilities. Now, open enrollment for it began on October 15th and will run through December 7th. And it’s why this time of year sees tons of ads like these.
Hi, I’m Joe Nameoth. If you’re on Medicare, this is important information.
Hi, William Shatner here with a new message about Medicare benefits.
Hi, I’m Jimmy JJ Walker. If you’re on Medicare, listen to this.
I’m Meredith Vieira. What’s complicated and confusing that many people over 65 deal with each year? Medicare.
JOHN: Okay, this isn’t the point, but the question, what’s complicated and confusing that people over 65 deal with each year is just too broad given that the answer is everything. Everything confuses them. Have you ever seen a 70-year-old try to work an Apple TV remote? It’s actually the reason Biden dropped out of the race last year. Apparently, his team handed him an Amazon Fire Stick right before that debate, and we all know what happened next.
These ads are ubiquitous. One analysis found that in Medicare’s open enrollment period a few years ago, over half a million ads like those aired on TV, that’s over 8,000 a day. Normally, for an ad to be that overplayed, it needs to feature a child’s band singing a song that makes you want to commit mass murder. But while they’re often framed as being about Medicare, they’re actually promoting something called Medicare Advantage.
And that is different because while Medicare Advantage has the word Medicare in it, it is not what you may think. It’s not health insurance provided directly to you by the government. Instead, it’s a different system where the government pays private insurers, typically owned by companies like these to administer your benefits for you. Honestly, it probably shouldn’t have the word Medicare anywhere near it because it’s misleading. It’s kind of like the mountain chicken. Picture what a mountain chicken looks like in your head right now. Do you have it? You’re wrong cuz it’s this. It’s a frog, which is just wrong. Mountain chicken sounds like at minimum a chicken that lives in the mountains or what a starving stranded hiker would call human flesh. It’s just mountain chicken. It’s mountain chicken. It’s definitely not Jeff. What it does not sound like though is this. That is a misuse of words.
Anyway, the point is, thanks to blanket advertising and the fact some employee retirement packages offer these plans exclusively, more than half of eligible Medicare beneficiaries are now enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan, and a percentage expected to grow to nearly two-thirds by 2034, which is concerning because these plans can have real issues. One expert has said the best candidate for Medicare Advantage is someone who’s healthy. We see trouble when someone gets sick. But that is a problem because statistically most people will get sick. It’s just a fact of life. Like all hamsters die, most cats hate you. And if Jeremy Allen White is on screen, he is sweating. Acting is sweating. We all know that.
And that’s by no means the only flaw here. Because as you will see, while these plans can be great for companies’ bottom lines, they can be woefully insufficient for those who signed up for them and the providers who have to deal with them. Medicare Advantage basically has all the problems of private insurance but applies to a more vulnerable population.
So given that tonight, let’s talk about Medicare Advantage — what it is, what the coverage can be like, and whether you or someone you know should sign up. But to understand it, you first need to understand how Medicare works, which already isn’t easy because, as you’ll know if you’ve ever enrolled in it yourself or had to help someone else do it, it is confusing. On a scale of one to Inception, it is basically Tenet. And I don’t say that lightly.
To put it very simply, Medicare currently has four components: Part A, B, C, and D. Part A covers hospital and other inpatient care. That’s what you’ve paid into your whole life. And for most, you can enroll at 65 with no additional premium due. Part B covers doctor’s visits and outpatient services. Now, you do have to pay a monthly premium for that. That’s typically taken out of your social security check. And even then, it only covers 80% of your cost — the remaining 20% you have to pay for out of pocket. But you can buy a separate Medigap plan to cover that, which typically costs $200 or more a month.
And that gap is something ads pushing Medicare Advantage like to highlight — like this one featuring Kelsey Grammar.
COMMERCIAL: Doesn’t look good. He’s missing 20%. He should have got better insurance. Fingers crossed. Are you missing 20%, too? That’s what your Medicare insurance might not pay for. That 20% is critical to your health care and your wallet. See, original Medicare only covers about 80% of your Part B medical costs. The rest is up to you. Can be thousands of dollars. Right when you least expect it. So, let Coverance help find a Medicare insurance plan that doesn’t leave you so exposed.
JOHN: Stop it. You stop it right now, Frasier. Though, to be fair, that is not the creepiest thing he’s ever said about the medical profession, given his memoir features the quote, “Nice girls made me really nervous, claustrophobic.” But broken women, women in pain, women looking to be fixed, are for these women the doctor was in. That is on the back cover. And it is wild to publish a book where you essentially argue if you **** me, you might need professional help.
Anyway, that is part B. Now, if you want prescription drugs — and if you’re a senior citizen, you definitely do — you need to pay for a separate Part D premium which helps cover those. And that leaves us with Part C, which is Medicare Advantage. It functions as an alternative to all the other parts in that it helps cover hospitals, doctor visits, and usually drugs, while offering often extra benefits like some dental, vision, and hearing coverage or even debit cards to help pay grocery bills. And it does all of that for a relatively low upfront cost, as other than that standard premium taken out of your social security check, over three-quarters of enrollees pay no additional premium at all. So, it is pretty appealing on the surface.
And while I don’t have to show you one more ad for it, especially as it basically recaps everything I just said, I’m going to do it anyway because it is magnificent.
COMMERCIAL:
Al, did you make that call?
Honey, we already have Medicare. Why do I need to call?
Alan, the Feldman said we may be able to get additional benefits with a Medicare Advantage plan right here in our zip code with zero monthly premiums.
Honey, what do you mean additional benefits? We turned 65, we got Medicare. That’s all there is to it, right?
I’m talking about Medicare Part C, commonly called Medicare Advantage. We have traditional Medicare, which is only Medicare Parts A and B, but not Part C.
Wait, so not everyone on Medicare is a Part C plan?
No. That’s why we need to call because there may be plans available with additional benefits that aren’t covered under Medicare Parts A and B. We don’t have a Medicare Part C plan, which covers everything in Part A and Part B, plus extra benefits in Medicare Part C.
What kind of extra benefits?
There are great plans that may be available with extra benefits like dental, vision, and hearing.
Did you say dental?
JOHN: That is, and this is true, only the first half of that commercial. It has it all — amateur porn-level acting, wild physical gestures, the totally unnecessary undercurrent of a broken marriage, and the phrase “right here in our zip code.” It is perfect. I also love the disclaimer saying “paid actor portrayal,” as if we’ve been so sucked in by the natural delivery of concussed Rob Reiner and overcaffeinated Amy Sedaris here that we might need to be reminded.
But the thing is, there are a lot of drawbacks to Medicare Advantage plans. For a start, they come at an inflated cost to taxpayers, which is a bit weird given that a big part of the argument for creating this system over two decades ago was that bringing in private insurers would help control costs. In fact, here is Orrin Hatch back then, one of its biggest cheerleaders, making his pitch.
ORRIN HATCH (archival): Choice, the right to pick the coverage you want. That’s what Medicare Advantage actually gives you. Now, there are those who believe that socialism is the answer to everything. Let government do it. Government can do it more efficiently. Well, if you believe that, you haven’t watched the last 50 years.
JOHN: Yeah. The whole argument was that it would expand choice and companies would do a better job at controlling costs than the government. And look, some things are better when the private sector’s involved. Take novelty slippers. Only through competition in the free market do you get innovations like hairy feet slippers, creepy Marge Simpson slippers, Sigmund Freud slippers, Danny DeVito slippers, and golden penis slippers. And if you’re wondering who would buy those, you are looking at him right here.
Now, why did I buy these? I don’t know. Probably because of something deep-rooted in my psyche stemming from my childhood. At least according to my Sigmund Freud slipper right here.
But sadly, sadly, the private sector hasn’t done as well with Medicare as it has with slippers, because these plans have never saved the government money. In fact, a report last year estimated Medicare Advantage had cost the government, over the previous 18 years, an extra $591 billion. And this is partly down to the fact that the major companies involved need to make profits for their investors. And they have found ways to do that.
One concerns how they get paid. Because in traditional Medicare, a provider treats you and the government pays a fee for it. But in Medicare Advantage, plans get a fixed payment from the government for each member they take on, regardless of whether you get treatment or not. And crucially, that payment’s based in large part on what illnesses you’re listed as having, because insurers are entitled to extra money when their patients are diagnosed with conditions that are costly to treat. Here’s a report from several years ago explaining how it basically works.
REPORTER (archival): The insurance company uses what are known as diagnosis codes to report that person’s level of sickness to the government.
Well, they pay one rate for plain old diabetes and then they pay another rate for diabetes with complications. If you write down in the file that the patient has diabetes and has complications with eyesight or other things, they’ll get paid a higher rate.
JOHN: Right? And in theory, that makes sense. You want insurers to take care of sicker patients. Unfortunately, a lot of things that sound good turn out to be terrible in practice — like overalls on adults, or drinking a beer, or buying a flight that leaves at 6:00 a.m. to save money. Oh, sure, seems like a good idea until you’re at the airport at 4 in the morning. But hey, at least you got to your destination by 10:00 a.m. and can’t check into your hotel for another five hours. Aren’t you glad you saved $35 on that ticket?
Well, the same is true here, because the government paying more for sicker patients has given insurers an incentive to identify as many health conditions as possible for each enrollee — and potentially to then game the system. They can find lots of ways to add big-money diagnoses to patients’ charts through a practice known as upcoding.
This happens a lot. One investigation found that Medicare paid insurers about $50 billion over three years for diagnoses added just by insurers. Not only that, many diagnoses were added for which patients then received no treatment. And often neither the patients nor their doctors had any idea — which isn’t great, is it? The whole point of a doctor is for them to diagnose you. Or in my case, for them to look down at the chart, look at me again, back at the chart, and then say, “48 years old? Are we sure about that?”
And while insurers will claim they’re just being thorough, they’ve been repeatedly accused of essentially pulling a Munchausen by paperwork. In 2022, The Times found eight of the ten biggest Medicare Advantage insurers had submitted inflated bills according to federal audits, and that four of the five largest players had faced federal lawsuits alleging that efforts to over-diagnose their customers had crossed the line into fraud.
And some have been accused of getting very sneaky to add patient codes. For instance, many tout home visits with ads featuring happy seniors excitedly greeting healthcare workers at their door. Here is how UnitedHealthcare advertises theirs.
COMMERCIAL: Remember the good old days when doctors made house calls? UnitedHealthcare offers their Medicare Advantage members an annual visit from a licensed clinician in their own home at no extra cost. Home visits may include a review of your medical history, a check of your vital signs, and a chance to talk about your health concerns. With house calls, being healthy starts at home.
JOHN: Yeah. And you can see how attractive that is. Not least because the senior gets a visitor, and you know how happy that makes them. The elderly love exactly three things: having guests, talking to guests, and then freaking out when that guest sits in their chair.
But an investigation found that in programs like that one, companies push nurses to run screening tests and add unusual diagnoses, turning the roughly hour-long stops in patients’ homes into an extra $1,800 per visit on average. And while UnitedHealthcare will insist most of the conditions it’s coded for in its House Calls program haven’t raised payment, some very much have.
For instance, documents show its software would suggest the diagnosis of secondary hyperaldosteronism, a condition in which levels of the hormone aldosterone rise — without requiring it be confirmed by a lab test. UnitedHealthcare apparently diagnosed that nearly a quarter million times after home visits, leading to $450 million in government payments over just three years. Even though a former House Calls nurse said, “In a million years, I wouldn’t have come up with a diagnosis of secondary hyperaldosteronism.”
But of course not. I didn’t even know what hyperaldosteronism was before working on this piece. And to be honest, I still don’t really know much about it — aside from the fact that you can rearrange the letters to spell “modernist horseplay,” which isn’t nothing, but it does feel close to it.
Now, I have to tell you, UnitedHealthcare claims that report misrepresents House Calls, which is just about supplementing doctor’s visits and identifying gaps in patient care. I presume that they’re currently making that same argument to the DOJ’s criminal healthcare fraud unit, which is investigating its Medicare billing practices. And I wish them the very best of luck with that.
But they are not the only company who faced these sorts of accusations. An insurer called Independent Health faced similar claims, including that a woman in one of their Advantage plans was apparently coded for prostate cancer because, according to an internal email, “when a married couple has any disease, both were assigned to that disease,” which is both ridiculous and also kind of romantic.
Do you, Tracy, promise to take Doug’s diseases from tip to taint as long as you both shall live?
I do. I really do.
Now again, I have to tell you, Independent Health did not admit liability, but they did pay $98 million to settle that lawsuit. You know, the exact kind of thing you do when you’re not liable for something.
So, at this point, I think it’s pretty clear these plans aren’t a particularly good use of taxpayer money. But are they good for patients? Well, on the surface, cheaper premiums sound appealing. And if you’re relatively healthy, these plans can seem like the more attractive option. Just listen to this woman explaining why she and her husband picked one.
WOMAN: We are very active. I play pickleball twice a week. We have a big garden. We have animals that we take care of, and so we’re always doing something. And we wanted to retire while we were still able to do things together. And that we like the Advantage plan because it seemed to fit our needs for that.
JOHN: Right. And I get that that makes sense for her right now, because from the minute I saw that woman, I knew she played pickleball. She didn’t need to tell me that. Everything about her screams, “I’ll dink your kitchen then cross-court lob until we bagel, because guess what — we la the pickle, bitch.”
And Medicare Advantage plans go out of their way to recruit people like her. Many even offer perks like gym memberships, which can be disproportionately attractive to relatively healthy beneficiaries.
But once you get sick, you can find out your plan has a lot of limitations. For example, under regular Medicare, you can go to any doctor or hospital that takes it — which is most of them. But with Medicare Advantage, as with most private insurance, you can typically only use doctors in the plan’s network and service area. And as those can change at any time, a doctor who is in-network when you sign up can quickly fall out of it — and that can be a big problem.
Consider this woman who had cancer, who qualified for Medicare due to disability, but signed up for a Medicare Advantage plan thinking that it would save her money.
WOMAN: I went for my routine checkup. I’d been a Dana-Farber patient since 2013, and I got a bill. They’re saying the provider’s in-network in the building, but the building of Dana-Farber is out-of-network, and I’m not allowed to go there anymore, even though I’d been going there and have the same insurance. So after all of these years, I have now moved my care to a different hospital because I can’t go there anymore.
JOHN: That is absurd. Her doctor was in network, but the building wasn’t. It’s one of those things that makes your brain hurt if you think about it for too long — like how gravity works, or why some people’s bodies fart when they’re scared, or how Bill Bixby’s daughter was 17 years old the year his girlfriend was born. Some things are just too difficult for you to comprehend.
But it can be genuinely hard to find someone in network on an Advantage plan. And even if its list of providers looks good on paper, it can quickly collapse under the slightest inspection, as this man discovered:
MAN: I’m diabetic, so I looked under endocrinology. There were four listed, and the first two were at Schnuck’s grocery stores — and they weren’t endocrinologists. They were just pharmacies. So apparently that means that they offer two endocrinologists in this 25-mile radius, and that has me hugely concerned.
INTERVIEWER: Is that enough for the senior population here?
MAN: No.
JOHN: Yeah, of course it isn’t. And finding out half your list is just grocery store pharmacies would be frustrating, because everybody knows you don’t go there for an endocrinology appointment. You go there to check your blood pressure in the machine that makes your arm feel like it’s being squeezed by Paul Mescal’s thighs. That is a thing that we all do.
And that is not a one-off either. One review found the majority of Medicare Advantage organizations had between 30 to 60% inaccurate locations in their directories. But even if you can find a provider, you may then have to deal with something called prior authorizations.
Now, you’re probably familiar with them from employer-sponsored plans. While traditional Medicare almost always pays for the care your doctor says you qualify for, virtually all enrollees in Medicare Advantage are required to obtain prior authorization for some services. While these plans are supposed to cover all medically necessary services that original Medicare does, actually getting approval can be a grueling process. As this doctor explains:
DR. GERALD HARMON: We have to call for a prior authorization, and we can’t do it electronically. We actually have to call on the phone — the old-fashioned telephone. We have to call an 800 number or some number, and then we have to give them all the data. We have to give them the insurance information, we have to give them the patient’s date of birth, things like that. And then what they do is they give us then an authorization to fax them the information. So I’ve called them to get permission to fax them a request, and then once they’ve got it, I’ve got to call them while they discuss the fax. That’s another barrier, an obstacle to care that’s incredibly time-consuming, has no value added, and it seems antithetical to trying to get prior authorization. What I really am getting is a prior authorization to get a prior authorization.
JOHN: Yeah. And everything about that sounds like a nightmare — including the presence of the words “fax machine.” I thought we’d stopped making them around the same time we stopped making good romantic comedies. In fact, I think the last time I saw a fax machine, a frazzled Michelle Pfeiffer was getting horned up for George Clooney. Remember that? Remember good romantic comedies? The kind of films that feel like a blanket and make you leak from all your holes. What happened to this country?
Anyway, as you might guess, Medicare Advantage providers partly or fully deny millions of prior authorizations each year, and that can be maddening for those who need care. Take what happened to Gary Bent. He had significant complications from brain surgery, including being unable to stand or walk on his own. His doctors said he needed a lengthy stay at a highly skilled rehab center. Now, under traditional Medicare, that would have been covered. But he had a Medicare Advantage plan from UnitedHealthcare, which only approved him for a few weeks at a short-term rehab facility.
And Gary’s wife and daughter remember the advice that they got from his care team about trying to appeal United’s decisions.
GARY’S WIFE: They told me I would probably win one or two, maybe even three. But then the speed with which these denials came would increase. They would be fewer and fewer days apart, and eventually I was going to lose.
GARY’S DAUGHTER: We felt like this process was designed to wear us out. And I would say it did wear us out.
JOHN: Yeah. And that’s exactly what happened. They won two appeals, then lost a third after an external reviewer sided with the company. While UnitedHealthcare insists it was just following Medicare guidelines, Gary was sent home before his family felt he was ready — with, by the way, a fever and neck pain. And within 11 hours of being discharged, he was rushed to the ER, where he was diagnosed with meningitis. And that was just one step in a quick decline toward him dying the following winter — a decline that his wife says was made worse by the added trauma of having to fight for the care he needed and was entitled to.
And there are some things so awful it’s almost impressive to be able to make them worse. It’s like seeing a Cybertruck with Diddy’s face painted on it. I don’t know how you managed to do it, but I like this even less.
And the thing is, delaying, underpaying, or denying care doesn’t just hurt patients — it hurts hospitals, too, particularly those in rural areas, because they don’t have the time or resources to sink into constantly appealing decisions, which has had real consequences.
REPORTER (archival): This was once the geriatric psychiatry unit at Alliance Healthcare in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Now, the hallways hollow and beds sitting empty. This operating room only a few years ago was doing five or six procedures a day. Now zero. Dr. Kenneth Williams is the CEO. He says the hospital can no longer afford the unit or any inpatient care for that matter.
DR. WILLIAMS: All of this used to service people that really needed help, and now it’s just totally empty.
REPORTER: It’s empty. It’s gone.
DR. WILLIAMS: And it was — it died the last few years with Medicare Advantage.
JOHN: That is terrible. Thanks to Medicare Advantage, that whole wing is now abandoned — and by the looks of it, already haunted, because at any moment it feels like Jigsaw is about to pop out with a realtor to just check out the space.
And even hospitals which haven’t had to close wings have stopped taking these plans, with a 2023 survey finding nearly 20% of health systems had stopped accepting at least one Medicare Advantage plan that year alone.
And if you’re thinking, “Well, you know what, that’s okay. If I get sick and I need a specialist, I’ll just switch back to regular Medicare,” — you may not be able to, because remember, it has that 20% gap that you need to cover. Now, when you first enroll, it’s easy to buy a Medigap plan to do that, because they can’t hold preexisting conditions against you. But in most states, once you’ve enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan, Medigap insurers are allowed to reject you based on them.
So, as a practical matter, once a patient enters the Medicare Advantage system, they typically can’t afford to leave. Think of it like Scientology or a beanbag chair — easy to get in, very difficult to get out.
And when you take all this together, you get a system where the incentives are clearly set up for insurance companies to make you look as sick as possible on paper while doing as little as possible to help you when you actually need it.
Now, the industry is going to dispute that. They’ve even funded their own studies suggesting their plans actually save the government money and deliver consistently better health outcomes than traditional Medicare. Though when Stat News asked more than a dozen leading health policy experts to review a bunch of those studies, they found they had fundamental flaws and obvious biases, and on the whole were so skewed they basically constituted an alternate reality.
And look, if these companies are living in such a dangerous fantasy world, they clearly need professional help. Luckily, I happen to know a board-certified therapist who can see them — but bad luck, he’s out of network, so [bleep] you.
So what can we do here? Well, as I’ve said before, so many of these problems would go away if we had single-payer healthcare. And we could get closer to that by making regular Medicare more expansive and easier to navigate, and getting rid of that 20% gap in coverage.
But until then, we should at the very least be calling Medicare Advantage by a different name — and ideally one without the term Medicare anywhere near it — because as you’ve seen, they’re just not the same. It’s like the difference between a flashlight and a fleshlight. Sure, they might sound similar, but they do drastically different things.
Unfortunately, though, it is tough to talk about potential reforms right now given who is in charge of Medicare currently — because in case you’ve forgotten, it is this [bleep] guy.
DR. MEHMET OZ (clip): 22 across, eight letters, starts with M. A government entity dedicated to the health of seniors. Mehmetoz.
CONTESTANT: It’s Medicare.
DR. OZ: Mehmetoz. It fits.
CONTESTANT: It’s Medicare.
DR. OZ: Well, guess what? I work for you now. Yep. They put me in charge of Medicare. Now, how cool is that?
JOHN: Not cool. Not cool at all. And it is just wild to see someone who’s been on TV for two decades give the single worst line reading I have ever seen. And remember, we just watched these two go to town.
One of the many reasons it’s not cool is that Dr. Oz has not only promoted Medicare Advantage in sponsored segments on his TV show, he once co-wrote an op-ed titled “Medicare Advantage for All Can Save Our Healthcare System,” basically suggesting that we roll it out for everyone. And while he’s recently acknowledged some of the problems that I’ve mentioned, he’s also said the administration wants to give insurers an opportunity to voluntarily fix them — which I would say is the most ridiculous thing that he has ever said, except he did once do this:
OZ CLIP:
So that’s what you call a camel toe.
Yeah.
Can I actually show you what camel toes look like?
Of course.
Here’s a picture of what a real camel toe looks like.
JOHN: Television was a bad idea.
So look, at the policy level, for now, we are kind of stuck. But in the meantime, if you or someone you know is considering one of these plans — first, if you can afford to buy a Medigap plan and enroll in traditional Medicare, you should do that. But if you can’t, you should at least understand the potential drawbacks of Medicare Advantage.
Whatever you do, do not call those broker numbers on TV, because they won’t give you unbiased advice. They get much higher commissions if they funnel you to Advantage plans. So, if you want independent advice, you can call your State Health Insurance Assistance Programs. You can find your state’s number at this website.
And while I know it is basically impossible to escape these ads right now, we thought the least we could do is provide one for you that is technically accurate.
COMMERCIAL:
WOMAN: Al, did you make the call?
AL: What call?
WOMAN: The Feldman said we may be able to get additional benefits with Medicare Advantage right here in our own zip code.
AL: Our zip code?
WOMAN: Yeah, the zip code we live in. It covers the 8.6 square miles of our neighborhood.
AL: Yeah, I know what a zip code is. But honey, we already have Medicare, so we don’t need to call anyone.
WOMAN: Al, do you listen? I said Medicare Advantage. It has all the letters of the word Medicare, but none of the actual Medicare.
AL: Wait a minute. It’s not regular Medicare?
WOMAN: No, that’s why we need to call. The Feldman said their Medicare Advantage plan has dirt-cheap premiums.
AL: Did you say dirt cheap?
WOMAN: Yes, Al. Of course I did. What is wrong with you today? With Medicare Advantage, you’ll get free gym memberships, a grocery allowance, and a nurse will come to our house.
AL: For a threesome?
WOMAN: Oh, you’d love that, wouldn’t you, Al? No, not for a threesome. The nurse would come to our house so that she or he can diagnose us with a bunch of diseases that we don’t have and our doctors don’t even know anything about.
AL: But what about conditions I actually have, like my diabetes?
WOMAN: Not only will they cover it, but I will suddenly have diabetes, too.
AL: Why?
WOMAN: Because it’s romantic, Al! Kiss me.
AL: Hold on.
WOMAN: What?
AL: Do we at least get to keep our doctors?
WOMAN: Well, we get to choose from a list of doctors, but they’re mostly just grocery stores, local middle schools, a JCPenney, and an abandoned Chuck E. Cheese.
AL: Did you say Chuck E. Cheese?
WOMAN: And if you find a doctor that’s covered, well, you’d better hope that the building that he or she works in is too. Otherwise, you might be getting your prostate checked out in the parking lot — and not in the fun way.
AL: This is starting to sound like a bad idea.
WOMAN: No, no, it isn’t. I want a Medicare Advantage plan, Al. Plus, the premiums are so low. Just think of all the money we could save. Sure, the care might be worse, but that’s okay because we’re not sick right now, in this very moment.
AL: But what if we get sick later?
WOMAN: Well, then we’re fucked, Al. But that’s a later problem. Right now, we’re active. You golf, and I play pickleball with Paul Feldman twice a week.
AL: I didn’t know you played pickleball with Paul Feldman.
WOMAN: Oh, yeah. I’ve been playing with Paul for years. He is great. In fact, I think I’m in love with him.
AL: Wait — did you say you’re in love with him?
WOMAN: Yes, Al. He fucks like a Toyota and loves like a Subaru. Now please, call the number and get us a doctor so that he can treat our herpes.
AL: Herpes? Is that one of these fake diagnoses?
WOMAN: No, Al, we both have herpes now.
ANNOUNCER (voice-over): Don’t call this or any other number on your screen. Medicare Advantage is not traditional Medicare. It’s administered by private insurance. Your doctor may or may not be covered. And if you or your wife is playing pickleball with Paul Feldman, seek medical attention immediately because you have herpes now. Paul Feldman gave you both herpes.
