'Last Week Tonight' portrayal of doctor's Iowa Medicaid testimony gets John Oliver sued

A physician who offered controversial testimony on Medicaid in an Iowa hearing is suing comedian John Oliver over an episode of "Last Week Tonight" the physician says defamed him.

The late-night comedian known for his acerbic take-downs landed in hot water last month when Dr. Brian Morley, who was shown in clips during an episode of Oliver's show tackling Medicaid, insisted he was not in on the joke.

Lawyers for Morley, a physician whose testimony regarding Medicaid in Iowa was used in Oliver's segment on private companies that manage the government-sponsored benefits, accused Oliver and his team of defamation.

In a complaint filed Friday, Morley's lawyers allege the "Last Week Tonight" team intentionally took clips of the doctor out of context to spark outrage and make him the face of a predatory system.

The complaint revolves around a portion of Oliver's April 2024 episode about Medicaid which, lawyers for Morley say, wrongfully implied that he had "illegally" denied services or care to recipients of the government-backed insurance program.

The complaint also alleges that Oliver's team used chop-and-screw editing techniques to imply that Morley had argued in support of allowing a severely disabled patient to sit in his own excrement once care was cut off for in-home bathing.

In the episode, Oliver shows a clip of a severely disabled patient in Iowa whose Medicaid care was cut off for a period of time.

Then, he plays testimony from Morley, who in 2017 was working as a medical director for AmeriHealth Caritas, a managed care organization contracted by the state of Iowa to manage its Medicaid program.

"People have bowel movements every day where they don't completely clean themselves, and we don't fuss over (them) too much," a clip of Morley's voice says. "People are allowed to be dirty. … You know I would allow him to be a little dirty for a couple of days."

Lawyers for Morley declined to comment, while a representative for "Last Week Tonight" called the lawsuit "meritless" and said the show looks "forward to vigorously contesting it in court," in a statement sent Thursday to USA TODAY.

"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 complaint argues, alleging the late-night host and his team "consciously manipulated the context of their broadcast."

In the episode, Oliver introduces the quote by saying Morley is describing a "similar" patient to the one depicted in the earlier clip and adds: "When I first heard that I thought that has to be taken out of context … we got the full hearing, and I'm not going to play it for you, 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."

Morley's lawyers, however, argue that it was 100% taken out of context. Oliver's program, they argued, had defamed the doctor by failing to provide vital details about the actual patient he was talking about and disclosing that he had approved some, just not all care − and that the partial denial was deemed legal.

They even take aim at the show's grammar, writing in the complaint that the "use of an ellipsis" was integral in removing important context from Morley's quotation.

Oliver, who rose up the ranks of late-night hosting after a start on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," is known for his provocative and politically charged comedy. "Last Week Tonight" focuses on one subject each week, combining sarcasm, parody and real journalism.

AmeriHealth Caritas in January 2017 cut Ankeny resident Nathan McDonald’s in-home medical service visits to five times a week rather than the twice-daily visits he had received since 2015 to help him live independently.

It was McDonald whom Morley was referring to in his testimony when the doctor said it was acceptable for the Ankeny man with cerebral palsy to go a few days without being fully clean after a bowel movement.

A year later, AmeriHealth Caritas reversed that decision that denied him full care his doctors prescribed.

The Des Moines Register contributed to this story.