Watch John Oliver Expose the Dialysis Industry and Update Us on Net Neutrality

A seemingly off-beat topic for John Oliver, dialysis treatment, is the focus of the latest Last Week Tonight segment. Oliver goes in on for-profit dialysis treatment companies Fresenius and DaVita, of which the latter’s CEO has a penchant for dressing as a musketeer, and eccentric monikers such as “village” for his company and “mayor” for himself.

In the segment, Oliver looks at the history of dialysis and kidney transplants in the United States and how the industry became overrun by for-profit companies at the risk of the rapidly growing population of dialysis patients now totaling half a million people. DaVita specifically is described by a former employee, who was let go for asking to join a workers union, as a “machine” more concerned with quickly getting patients on and off dialysis than properly cleaning the machines between each patient.

The segment also features interviews with several dialysis patients who are frustrated with ignorant comments from neighbors and mishandling by company employees. One outspoken subject tells a neighbor who assumes she is a “drunk” that “if [she] doesn’t get out of my face, [she] will need a doctor.” Oliver breaks the ignorance and silence surrounding kidney disease to expose the issues within its treatment.

The host highlights the inadequate government oversight of these for-profit companies, requiring workers to simply check a box saying whether they have talked to patients about kidney transplants, despite some DaVita facilities waiting up to five years to talk to patients about kidney transplants, which can greatly increase one’s life expectancy compared to dialysis.