The HBO host overlooked something key.
Last Week Tonight host John Oliver delivered one of his signature barnburners on Sunday. This time, the HBO comedian's target was the pharmaceutical industry, and its role in America's devastating prescription painkiller and heroin overdose epidemic, which has seen 165,000 prescription opioid-related deaths since 1999.
But while Oliver nailed how drug makers' marketing of powerful opioids, like OxyContin or Percocet, helped set the stage for 2.6 million Americans getting addicted, he missed a crucial part of the story: that Big Pharma and the U.S. health system, including insurance giants, which helped create the crisis, are now actively involved with coming up with answers to address it.
