A few states will be picking new elected officials on Tuesday, and John Oliver — who also wants everyone to know that he definitely didn’t invite Donald Trump to Last Week Tonight — would like everyone to start focusing on those races instead of the still-very-far-away presidential contest, if only for a few hours.
Especially if you live in Mississippi, Virginia, or Kentucky, where the fate of the Obamacare Medicaid expansion hangs in the balance, since many states did not take the federal money offered to states to help people who made too much money under the preexisting Medicaid requirements to qualify, but also don’t make enough money to get subsidies for insurance from the new exchanges — otherwise known as the Medicaid gap.
“I know that sounds like a terrible clothing chain where you can buy khaki hospital gowns sewn by children in India,” Oliver said on Wednesday night. “But amazingly, it’s even worse than that.”
Several candidates in those three states have vowed not to expand Medicaid in the future — or have mentioned undoing policy changes that have already happened. Many states with conservative leaders — like Ohio, led by Governor John Kasich — decided to take the expansion money despite the fact that they weren’t too fond of Obamacare, since it was free money that would help poor people get insurance.
At another point in the show, Oliver shared his idea for how to prevent war with China: deploying Kenny G.
