TV

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver explores our massive debt-collection dilemma, then absolves $15 million of it in record TV giveaway

“You get a car! You get a car!! You get a car!!! EVERYBODY GETS A CAR!!!!”

I don’t even need to remind you those were Oprah Winfrey’s words when she gifted a brand-new car to every person in her Oprah studio audience on an episode years ago. That was nice. Also a tax hassle, as we recall the fallout afterward.

Last night on HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, our host devoted the bulk of his half-hour episode to America’s massive debt problem — and even more importantly, how banks buy and sell off our debt to each other and then to the shadiest of debt-collection agencies, and anyone, really. So why not have Oliver and his show’s staff buy some of that debt? They’ve created their own church. And now, they’ve got CARP. Central Asset Recovery Professionals, Inc., to be more precise. They bought one such debt offered up for sale, totaling $14,922,261.76, covering some 9,000 debtors in Texas. And then Oliver absolved them of their debt. Completely.  Thanks to partnership with RIP Medical Debt.

Take that, Oprah.

Good on you, John Oliver and the staff at Last Week Tonight! Doing the Lord’s work. Truly. Madly. Deeply.

Roll the clip!

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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